Publisher's Weekly Review
Can the police trust a skilled reporter whose father was a serial killer--and who may, himself, be a murderer? That question ratchets up the tension from the start of Zacharias's second thriller featuring Minnesota reporter--turned--police informant Rooker Lindström (following 2022's The Man Burned by Winter). Gunner Lindström was a notorious serial killer, but the police and the press wonder whether the body recently discovered under the floor of the Lindström home was killed by Gunner or his son, since the victim's wounds aren't consistent with Gunner's m.o.. Despite those suspicions, police detective Tess Harlow turns to Rooker for help after another corpse, believed to be that of a woman who vanished years earlier, is found near a lake. Harlow informs Rooker that a message addressed to him was left in an envelope on the woman's body: below an illustration of a dead bird were the words "Won't you come out and play?" Rooker agrees to help with the case and winds up in the all-too-familiar position of circling a cold-blooded murderer. What might feel strained in lesser hands is given plausible life by Zacharias's well-developed characters and tense atmospherics. Readers will be glued to the edges of their seats. Agent: Victoria Skurnick, LGR Literary. (July)
Kirkus Review
A serial killer, one who's clearly playing a long game, makes life hell for true-crime writer Rooker Lindström and everyone else in Itasca County, Minnesota--especially his victims. Eight years after Malin Jakobsson goes missing and the same week her body is discovered in Itasca State Park, Christine Vandenberg asks Rooker to find her daughter, paralegal Nora Vandenberg. Rooker, an alcoholic with a past that goes way beyond troubled, does his best to turn her away until she drops a hint that links Nora's disappearance to Malin's, and maybe to a third. Working with ex-cop private eye Millie Langston, his partner in Manor Investigations--a moniker they come up with while the client is sitting in front of them--Rooker identifies the third victim. It isn't Camile Hedstrom, whom conspiracy theorist Warrel Haney points them toward with devastating results; it's Amy Berglund, a local high school student who vanished 30 years ago. The evidence seems to point toward Gerald McAntis, a flamboyant lawyer whose services were recently requested by murderous gangster Luis Barrios from his solitary confinement cell (how did he even know the lawyer's name?). But given the barrage of revelations, which keep the ground treacherously shifting under Rooker's feet, it's anyone's guess who had the patience to kidnap and torture the victims over the course of a generation. The insultingly casual identification of the killer, who has indeed been lurking in the deepest shadows, and the mystery that continues to hang over his motivation even after the fade-out, make it clear that this grueling thriller isn't aimed at readers who expect the ending to answer their questions or dispel their nightmares. Grisly, overheated, and sensational in good ways and bad. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
