Martin Reese is a bit of a reverse Jack the Ripper: rather than killing women and taunting the police about their failure to catch him, he uses police files on serial killers to track down their victims’ missing bodies, then taunts police about their failure to find the victims themselves. Detective Sandra Whittal isn’t amused, but more importantly, she worries about how such an obsession may eventually escalate. For Martin, part of it is personal: his wife’s sister went missing and presumed killed when they were younger, and even though the killer was caught and executed, his wife has never quite gotten over the experience. Yet another part of it is just creepy as hell. For example, we learn that Martin actually met his wife in the first place because he’d tracked her down after having his interest piqued by her sister’s case. And later on, a serial killer recognizes the darkness in Martin and tags him as a potential protege.

Find You in the Dark is being billed as similar to Dexter and The Talented Mr. Ripley, and certainly, Martin Reese’s obsession with missing serial killer victims is twisted enough to put him in league with these two fictional killers. But the story itself didn’t quite live up to the promise of its concept. It’s a solid enough thriller, and its twists and turns were surprising enough, but it was very much touch and go in terms of holding my interest, and to be honest, I’m not sure why. Part of it may be that Martin lacks the sheer charisma that make Dexter and Tom Ripley so compelling as anti-heroes. He also lacks the depth of menace that makes Hannibal Lecter such a compelling villain.

Another part of it is that the story itself felt unsure of where exactly Martin lay in the divide between hero and villain, and that this uncertainty never felt particularly gripping. Martin had a bit of a hero complex, wanting to ferret out bad guys’ victims, and he had a bit of a creepy side with his obsessive fascination with the bodies in the first place, but by the end of the book, the overall impression of him was that of a protective father, and his concern for his daughter’s safety overtook pretty much both sides of his personality. While his need to protect his daughter was understandable, the result was that Martin as a villain lacked teeth, and after a point, his creepy hobby felt more pathetic than truly menacing.

There were some strong parts, and I liked the police procedural aspects with Detective Whittal, but overall, it was a pretty uneven read and ultimately not very memorable.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I read Need to Know after a string of pretty good but not incredible thrillers — the kind I could tell were well-crafted yet failed to keep me hooked 100% — and I was beginning to wonder if I was suffering from thriller burnout. Need to Know was just the cure I needed. I found myself devouring the book on the subway, on my lunch breaks and late into the night, and it was an incredible page turner.

Vivian Miller, a CIA counterintelligence analyst investigating a potential Russian sleeper cell in the States, makes the horrific discovery that one of the sleeper agents she’s investigating is someone she knows. The greatest achievement of her professional career forces Vivian to confront an impossible ethical dilemma, between her loyalty to her country and her loyalty to the people she loves. Need to Know is told at a breakneck pace, with one twist and revelation after another, and it was such a fun ride.

More than that, however, I loved how the story highlighted an experience that many professionals in high pressure jobs likely face: the tension between their personal life and their professional one. Cleveland does a great job in painting a picture of the duality in Vivian’s life, with both the professional and the personal aspects being equally important. Even though we later learn that investigating Russian operatives wasn’t necessarily Vivian’s dream job, she clearly takes pride in her work and has great talent for it. Equally important is her role as mother and wife, and I love how Cleveland makes it clear how much Vivian loves her family and her life with them, such that putting this part of her life in jeopardy for the sake of her job or even for the sake of her country is no easy decision.

Author Karen Cleveland is herself a former CIA analyst, and maybe that’s part of why she’s so good at creating such a twisty and exciting thriller. While the final twists weren’t much of a surprise to me, it did take me until fairly close to the big reveals to figure them out, and the experience was just a lot of fun. I can imagine this book being turned into an action thriller movie, or some Netflix show with a Jack Bauer 24 vibe. I highly recommend this to fellow thriller lovers.

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

Science writer Laura Reagan travels to Roanoke Ridge, Oregon to search for her former teacher and mentor, Professor Berton Sorel. He was supposed to be filming a TV show about Bigfoot in the area, but went missing before filming could start. Laura’s own feelings about Bigfoot are complex — her father had been one of the most preeminent researchers of the subject before he died, and while she had fond memories of accompanying her father on his work, she often found herself having to defend her own work against the shadow of his reputation.

Roanoke Ridge is a quick and entertaining mystery, and I loved the character of Laura and her struggle against living under the long shadows of both her father and her mentor. I also loved Laura’s friendship with Saad, who went with her to Roanoke Ridge. Part of me wishes there was a bit more clarity about who Saad was in general, as I had initially thought he was her assistant, but his haplessness at some of their escapades made me wonder what his role actually was. Regardless, I enjoyed reading about him as a character — I related a lot to his reactions during their hike around Oregon to find Professor Sorel.

The mystery may have begun as being about one person’s disappearance, but as reports of Bigfoot sightings start coming in, and people are starting to get hurt, Laura realizes that Sorel’s disappearance is part of a larger mystery. Roanoke Ridge hides a secret that goes back years, and there are people who would go very far to make sure it stays hidden. The Bigfoot sightings themselves aren’t as thrilling as I’d hoped, though that may just be because of my own skepticism.

Mostly, I think I watched too many Scooby Doo cartoons, so every time someone mentioned Bigfoot, I kept imagining the big reveal of the Scooby gang lifting off a rubber head and the bad guy calling them ‘pesky kids.’ Unfortunately, with such an association, it takes quite a bit more atmosphere for me to actually suspend disbelief and feel the fear the characters must have been undergoing, or alternatively, quite a lot more camp for me to go full-on Scooby Doo hilarity, and Roanoke Ridge didn’t quite get to either.

Still, I like how that subplot turned out, and particularly how it challenged Laura to question the people she thought she knew and events she thought remembered. It kept the story personal, such that it was easy to understand why Laura cared so much about uncovering the truth.

Roanoke Ridge is the first in a series, and it’ll be interesting to see where Dupuis takes Laura’s story from here.