The killer scores his crimes to music. The detective recognizes every song. And the killer has chosen him for a reason.

Detective William "Marshall" Cash catalogs vinyl the way other cops catalog case files. First pressings, rare imports, every sleeve alphabetized to the millimeter. It is the one thing in his life he can keep in order.

Then a cop's son is kidnapped, and the ransom note is a Lead Belly lyric.

Marshall recognizes the song before anyone else in the room. A cassette of the same track has been planted in the boy's bedroom, a second signature nobody else clocks. Chief Delacroix orders him to work the forensics and drop the music angle. Marshall nods and does the opposite.

Because this is not one case. This is the opening track.

Someone in the city has started a symphony. Every crime is scored to a song. Every song is a message. And every message points at the same buried truth: the department Marshall serves is rotten deeper than anyone will admit, and someone has finally decided the world is going to hear it.

The composer is not hiding. He is publishing.

As the tracks get more personal and the songs start coming from Marshall's own collection, Marshall realizes the composer has been building toward him from the start. Not as a target. As an heir. Marshall's father died working the same corruption the composer is now dragging into the light. The composer believes Marshall is the only cop left who will finish what he started.

To stop him, Marshall will have to decide whether the man scoring these crimes is a killer, a witness, or the closest thing to a mirror he has ever met.

CRHYME®: Composer of Chaos is the first novel in the CRHYME series by Lorenzo Flores. For listeners of S.A. Cosby's Razorblade Tears, Michael Connelly's The Poet, and Tana French's In the Woods — a lean, atmospheric crime thriller where the soundtrack is the case file.