FIND YOU IN THE DARK by Nathan Ripley

FIND YOU IN THE DARK
by Nathan Ripley

Simon & Schuster Canada
Publication Date: March 6, 2018

From Goodreads:

Martin Reese is obsessed with murder.

For years, he has been illegally buying police files on serial killers and studying them in depth, using them as guides to find missing bodies. He doesn’t take any souvenirs, just photos that he stores in an old laptop, and then he turns in the results to the police anonymously. Martin sees his work as a public service, a righting of wrongs that cops have continuously failed to do.

Detective Sandra Whittal sees it differently. On a meteoric rise in police ranks due to her case-closing efficiency, Whittal is suspicious of the mysterious caller—the Finder, she names him—leading the police to the bodies. Even if the Finder isn’t the one leaving bodies behind, who’s to say that he won’t start soon?

On his latest dig, Martin searches for the first kill of Jason Shurn, the early 1990s murderer who may have been responsible for the disappearance of his sister-in-law, whom he never met. But when he arrives at the site, he finds a freshly killed body—a young and recently disappeared Seattle woman—lying among remains that were left there decades ago. Someone else knew where Jason Shurn buried his victims . . . and that someone isn’t happy that Martin has been going around digging up his work.

When a crooked cop with a tenuous tie to Martin vanishes, Whittal begins to zero in on the Finder. Hunted by a real killer and by Whittal, Martin realizes that in order to escape the killer’s trap, he may have to go deeper into the world of murder than he ever thought.

I was provided a digital ARC of this book by NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada in exchange for an honest review.

When I first read the synopsis for this book, it reminded me of Dexter. Maybe not quite the same, because this guy is just digging up bodies instead of burying them. At first that seemed like a unique angle, but I quickly found out that it made the story lesser. Not less interesting, but the pace was slower. The intensity was low.

The intensity was low.

How couldn’t it be? The victims were already dead, and the people that killed them were already in jail or dead themselves. Then, suddenly, the intensity picks up. New lives at are stake, complete with real danger.

And, honestly, once the plot picks up, it was great. And while its surprises didn’t have me gasping, I didn’t see most of them coming. By the end, it was a very fast-paced and satisfying read.

The biggest win, and the biggest miss, for this book is the relationship between characters. The Detective, Sandra Whittal, and her partner have a very complicated and dysfunctional partership/relationship. Our main character, Martin, and the ‘someone who isn’t happy Maritn is digging up his work’ also spend some time together. Both relationships were my favourite aspect of this book, but there was very little of either.

Considering I usually run when the synopsis has the word ‘Detective’ in it, this premise intrigued me, and I’m glad it did. I enjoyed this book quite a bit, and would recommend it to anyone who likes a bit of a crime thriller.

Fun fact about this post: I was hoping to use this book for the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge as “Book with song lyrics in the title.” It sounded familiar, then I realized I was thinking of the Mariana’s Trench song Rhythm of Your Heart, which says ‘Meet me in the dark.’ So close.