Part of Lucas Davenport, book 18
First published 2008
A wealthy Minneapolis widow returns home to discover blood spattered across her walls. Her college-age daughter has vanished without a trace. The mother has always worried about her daughter's Gothic friends with their dark makeup, black clothes, and obsession with death. When police fail to locate the missing girl, the desperate mother turns to Weather Davenport, a surgeon whose husband Lucas works in law enforcement. Lucas Davenport reluctantly takes the case until a second member of the Goth community turns up brutally murdered. The investigation grows more complex as clues fail to connect logically. A mysterious young Gothic woman keeps surfacing and disappearing throughout the case. Lucas struggles to identify her and understand her role in the crimes. As he digs deeper, he develops an unsettling intuition that these violent incidents mask something far more sinister than random attacks on Minneapolis Goths.
Genres: suspense, mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: dark, emotional, fast-paced, suspenseful
Tropes: amateur-sleuth, dark-mystery, investigation
Setting: Minneapolis
384 pages · Hardcover · G.P. Putnam's Sons
Content warnings: violence