Stevie‘s review of That Darkness (Gardiner and Renner, Book 1) by Lisa Black
Police Procedural published by Kensington 26 Apr 16
It’s not easy to put a new spin on the police procedural formula, but every so often an author manages it, and makes me very happy in the process. Certainly there are plenty of stories out there featuring members of the forensic investigations team, some of which very neatly pair the lead character with a member of the police force they work with, and there are other series, some of which I greatly enjoy, in which the crime-fighting lead takes advice from a particularly lethal member of the criminal fraternity. This book, however, is possibly the first I’ve seen in which a forensics expert is paired with a cop who steps outside the law on a regular basis.
Experienced forensic scientist Maggie Gardiner has always had a fascination with vigilantes – her favourite film is Death Wish, starring Charles Bronson – and she wrote a paper in college discussing whether the killing of bad guys by those supposedly on the side of right can ever be justified. Detective Jack Renner, meanwhile, is pursuing an agenda that would definitely intrigue Maggie: taking out criminals who have escaped justice once too often – in his opinion – while searching for one particular killer whose crimes affected him more directly than any case he was involved in.
Maggie and Jack’s paths first cross when they’re both assigned to the case of an unidentified murder victim – a young girl who matches no missing person record, and may be a newcomer to the country. Jack realises that she is one of the victims of his next target, an Eastern European people smuggler. However, in his rush to eliminate his target – and save the girls still locked up in an abandoned apartment – he slips up and the body is found sooner than he expected.
Maggie starts to notice similarities in the trace evidence on victims of apparently unrelated killings, and the fact that most of those bodies – barring the first to come to her attention – makes her wonder if a vigilante is killing off criminals. Except vigilante killers only exist in fiction, as far as she’s aware.
Jack becomes aware of Maggie’s suspicions, but he is drawn to her nonetheless. He knows that he should curtail his activities, but feels very close to his ultimate goal – one that Maggie has also become aware of as a significant individual in Jack’s former life. All this can only ever lead to a three-person showdown…
I loved the great use this book made of small forensic details, and the way Maggie put her case together slowly, even as the killings seemed to escalate in frequency. I was also intrigued by the dilemma the story poses as to whether murder can ever be justified. I think not, but that doesn’t stop me cheering on the antihero in fiction. This book is the first of a series, and I’ll be very interested to see how the author keeps her set-up from falling into any genre clichés as the stories progress.
Grade: A
Summary:
As a forensic investigator for the Cleveland Police Department, Maggie Gardiner has seen her share of Jane Does. The latest is an unidentified female in her early teens, discovered in a local cemetery. More shocking than the girl’s injuries–for Maggie at least–is the fact that no one has reported her missing. She and the detectives assigned to the case (including her cop ex-husband) are determined to follow every lead, run down every scrap of evidence. But the monster they seek is watching every move, closer to them than they could possibly imagine.
Jack Renner is a killer. He doesn’t murder because he enjoys it, or because he believes himself omnipotent, or for any reason other than to make the world a safer place. When he follows the trail of this Jane Doe to a locked room in a small apartment where eighteen teenaged girls are anything but safe, he knows something must be done. But his pursuit of their captor takes an unexpected turn.
Maggie Gardiner finds another body waiting for her in the autopsy room–and a host of questions that will challenge everything she believes about justice, morality, and the true nature of evil…
Read an excerpt.
Other books in this series:
