Isabella's Reading Corner: Find You in the Dark

Find You in the Dark

Author: Nathan Ripley

Publication Date: March 6th, 2018

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Canada

Martin Reese has an unusual hobby. He finds the bodies of murder victims that have not yet been discovered. Using old case files for reference, he looks for seemingly random or unimportant clues that police working on the cases originally missed. He keeps photos of the bodies, along with detailed records of how he uncovered them, stored in his 'scrapbook', an old computer which is hidden away in a locked drawer in his house. Once he uncovers the remains he phones 911 anonymously on disposable cells, leading the police to where they are buried. Unfortunately for him, he has caught the attention of a serial killer who is not entirely happy with Martin's activities and is recently making those feelings known. Also hot on Martin's trail is police detective Sandra Whittal who believes he has escalated from being a 'finder' to a murderer.

Martin and his wife Ellen appear to have a good marriage with arguments mainly revolving around her overprotectiveness of their daughter, Kylie. Ellen's sister Tinsley went missing twenty years ago and Ellen believes she was murdered. She's worried the same will happen to Kylie, so she sets heavy boundaries and rules for her. Martin looks specifically for female victims of serial killers in an attempt to find Tinsley and put his wife's mind to rest.

The insight into Martin's personality is fascinating. There's a complexity to him as he conceals what he's doing from his wife and daughter to create some sort of balance within his life and family. He believes he is providing a public service for the victims’ loved ones. However, there might be another motivation that drives him other than providing closure and finding Tinsley's remains. Martin also has a history of secret impulses he's trying to suppress, so there could be an even deeper reason why he is digging up bodies.

The dark and rainy streets of Seattle create the perfect backdrop for the narrative. Author Nathan Ripley conveys such a sense of unease, I was frequently looking over my shoulder as I was reading. Find You in the Dark is a disturbingly sinister novel with plenty of suspense, intriguing characters and a story that kept me riveted.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for the DRC to review.

From the publisher:

In this chilling debut thriller, in the vein of Dexter and The Talented Mr. Ripley, a family man obsessed with digging up the undiscovered remains of serial killer victims catches the attention of a murderer prowling the streets of Seattle.

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.

You can read my original Isabella's Reading Corner post on Find You in the Dark here.