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Find You in the Dark

Nathan Ripley's crime novel follows a police tipster who is on the hunt and being hunted.

Nathan Ripley

CBC Books Posted: Jan 09, 2018 4:17 PM EST | Last Updated: May 28, 2019

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. (From Simon & Schuster Canada)

From the book

Bella Greene left his apartment for what she knew was going to be the last time. He didn't know that, would never believe his grip on Bella was so fragile after all the humiliations she'd gone through at his whim, but it was true. She wasn't going back.

She was outside his apartment building, which she'd left without making eye contact with the concierge. He had a Stalin mustache that was always flecked with brown cigarillo fragments and leered at her when she buzzed up alone, once asking her, "How much?" Bella had spat on his desk, a nice thick gob on the marble. He'd laughed at her and wiped it up.

FromFind You in the Darkby Nathan Ripley 2018. Published by Simon & SchusterCanada.

Find You in the Dark

Nathan Ripley

From the book

Interviews with Nathan Ripley