Finished
The 7th Woman by French author
Frédérique Molay, 1st in her Paris Homicide series starring Nico Sirsky, an unusually young Chief of Police who investigates exactly that, which was a special offer for just 99 cents in select countries last month. (Incidentally, it's currently on sale this month for $1.99, apparently in a greater selection of countries this time around. And my copy came with a free download link for another one of publisher Le French Book's 1st-in-series mystery titles, which was a nice bonus, even if it was for one I'd already bought during a Kobo sale.
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This won the Prix du Quai des Orfèvres, a reasonably prestigious award for an unpublished mystery/thriller manuscript which then gets published, in its original language. So I was actually a little let down to find out that, as one might guess from the title, it's one of those police procedurals chasing down the obligatory crazed sadistic psychosexual serial killer with an agenda and a tendency to taunt and threaten the investigators, and a fairly standard-seeming one at that (with maybe some extra goriness in the forensic descriptions, which admittedly, the author did seem to do her research upon).
That said, it did show some solid relationships between the investigating team (and made it clear that, hotshot young chief though he was, Sirsky was only one part of an integrated team that needed to work together to track and catch the killer), and legwork gathering evidence and piecing together clues and connections, alongside the obligatory red herrings, and some meditation on what makes such people the way they are, and the costs and risks of police work. (Although it did seem a little over-sentimental when it came to the assorted personal relationship dramas, and the gloating inner monologue of the culprit which so many authors feel the need to include is both boring and annoying as always.
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Overall, a fairly decent read if you don't mind crazed sadistic psychosexual serial killer hunts, and a reasonable beginning to the series, of which the 2nd book, which I'm currently on, is actually much more promising and has a more interesting plot of an apparent obvious suicide who left behind a hidden message claiming they were actually murdered, which may be a medical school prank (or not).