Jess Lourey

Twenty-something Mira James jumps at a chance to leave the Twin Cities in hopes of a new start. She's in a dead-end job, has a cheating boyfriend, and doesn't know what she wants for her future.

Moving to Battle Lake, Minnesota, may not be the exact new start she was looking for though. Yeah, she quickly finds a couple of new jobs. She's a new librarian at the Battle Lake Public Library and she's in charge since the other librarian is off on a vacation. She also gets a job writing for the local newspaper which lets her use her otherwise useless English degree.

She's swept off her feet by an archaeologist who's in town looking for the best property for a new tourist attraction. However, things take a downturn when she finds her new love dead on the floor of her library when she opens one morning.

As she looks into his murder, she uncovers more than the usual secrets in a town filled with quirky characters.

I enjoyed the small-town setting and all the quirky characters. I liked Mira's desire for a new start. The writing, told from Mira's point of view, was descriptive and amusing.… (meer)

While seemingly inspired by actual events in St. Cloud, Minnesota in the 1970s, this book very quickly moves into fictional events. This is not to say that this book was not a good read because it was. The way in which the author creates the world of an horrific series of events within a seemingly small number of people. (NOTE: I started to say close-knit but that is ultimately a surface impression that could not be farther from the truth.) What is truly striking about this book is how it -- whether intentionally or not -- creates separate worlds of men and women. Based on the setting in the 1970s, this is a legitimate fact to instill in the story but in reading from the present time, it is disconcerting how separate the lives are of men and women and by extension boys and girls. The author references the girls passing over a sort of virtual threshold from girl to woman and this is an accepted truth in this place and time. This potentially is what leads to the terrible events that occur to virtually all of the women and girls that are named in this book.

It was well worth the read. And, as I implied above, the author did an excellent job of describing the world of suburban 1970s.

I did like this book very much. The three-star rating is simply in relation to other books that I am currently reading and where my interests lie at the moment.… (meer)

Cold Case detective Van Reed of the BCA finds danger and begins to come to terms with her own very troubled past when she is assigned to look into the case of two young girls who go missing in Leech Lake, Minnesota, on a sunny summer day in 1980.

The case gets more complicated when the body of a woman buried alive is found in a secluded part of Minneapolis in the summer of 2022 and she proves to be one of the girls not seen since 1980. Van, who was a former member of the Minneapolis Police Department before joining the BCA, is forced to work with a detective who was instrumental in freezing her out of the MPD. He also has a connection to the Leech Lake case which he isn't eager to share.

Van works with forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck who is her polar opposite. He is meticulous in his methods and personal appearance; she's prone to hunches and lives surrounded by garbage. However, the two play off each other well and have some hidden similarities which come out in the story.

As Van investigates those witnesses who are still alive and retraces the crime, she suffers flashbacks of her own childhood when she was raised in a cult run by an obsessive patriarch. She only got out when the cult's leader was arrested and jailed for tax evasion. Van began having prophetic visions while still in the cult. They have sometimes helped her with her police work, but they have also led her to vigilantism where she has killed people she wasn't able to bring to justice through the legal system.

This was an interesting mystery with intriguing characters including a very creepy villain. I enjoyed the characters and the setting. I liked seeing a new relationship beginning for Van and Harry.… (meer)