Jess Lourey

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)

The Publisher Says: A troubled codebreaker faces an epic plot reaching back through centuries of America's secret history

Salem Wiley is a genius cryptanalyst, courted by the world's top security agencies ever since making a breakthrough discovery in her field of quantum computing. She's also an agoraphobe, shackled to a narrow routine by her fear of public places. When her mother's disappearance is linked to a plot to assassinate the country's first viable female presidential candidate, Salem finds herself both target and detective in a modern-day witch hunt.

Drawn into a labyrinth of messages encrypted by Emily Dickinson and centuries-old codes tucked inside the Beale Cipher, Salem begins to uncover the truth: an ancient and ruthless group is hell-bent on ruling the world, and only a select group of women stands in its way.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Secret history novels are always fun for me...they put a spin on the facts that usually makes very little sense, but has the lovely quality of being off-the-wall...and this outing into that garden of fantasy is no disappointment.

If James Rollins had written a woman-centered story, this is what it would feel like. Since I like James Rollins, I think of that as a compliment. Salem and Bel, with their matrilineal cultish secret society, The Underground, are in opposition to the male-dominated world-spanning cult, The Order...don't you love the harkening back to the antique world's division of authority into women/Earth::men/land?...each side ready to lie, cheat, and kill to accomplish their goals. The two (so far) stories in Salems world make it clear that the nightmare of christian nationalism and fascistic order/totalitarianism are only going to be effectively opposed by women organizing and taking their power back into their own hands.

This being a message I am totally on board with, I say go get you a copy and learn what one intelligent, observant woman thinks is worth fighting for, and how to do it. I won't say it's a roadmap since we live in mundane reality not Conspiracytopia, but I will say I agree that the stakes are existential.

When the next woman is nominated to run for president I will not be surprised if she faces some sort of threat very similar to this story's plot. There is no reason to think that the incels and MAGAts will change in the next four years. I hope that somewhere there is an actual real-life cabal of powerful women ready to blast the patriarchy that will come gunning for her. If they had the quasi-mystical powers that the Underground...do you not just love the echoes of Persephone in that name?...and if they could just use Emily Dickinsons poetry a a cipher, too....

The idea of power in the hands of women scares some men so badly that they will stoop to anything to stop it from occurring. This being amply demonstrated by the events of 2016, when the first version of this book came out, the anxiety that propeled this story reads as relevant today as it ever has. Absent some Great Dismantling of the patriarchy, the plot of this story will remain evergreen.

An excellent investment of a minimal amount of money, for very solid return of pleasure in the read.… (meer)

I’ve loved Jess Lourey’s thrillers ever since I read Bloodlines. She has a knack for writing that keeps you engaged and wanting to turn the pages, wide-eyed and eager to know what happens next. This was no exception. Started with a bang and did not let up until the end, the mystery and “oh shit” factory building into the reveal.

This was my one of my Kindle FirstReads picks for October.

Even creepier that this is based on a true story.

This is the story of Heather Cash, a 16-year old girl who lives in small Pantown, Minnesota. She and her best friend, Brenda, are exploring the quarries one night and see something they shouldn’t have…which may or may not tie to the disappearance of two girls in her town. There are two sets of suspects- and plenty of small town and family secrets that made my jaw drop (and I’ve read quite a few thrillers and psychological & domestic suspense stories!).

The story is told in first person from Heather’s POV, and while she is 16, a YA book this is NOT. There are some get dark themes explored. Her two friends are outgrowing her and she’s forced to grow up quickly, helping to care for her mother and looking out for her little sister, who’s also growing up fast and starting to attract the wrong kind of attention. There are also chapters interspersed within from Beth, a girl who is kidnapped in the first chapter.

The characters feel like real people. I felt like I knew them intimately and shared in their sorrows, shock, and fears. The ending was satisfying and loose ends were tied up. Writing flowed and was easy to read.

This was a haunting tale of innocence lost and the monsters who walk along us. Jess Lourey is clearly a talented storyteller and I will definitely be reading more of her work in the future!… (meer)