The taken ones

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The taken ones

Title:

The taken ones

Author:

Lourey, Jess, 1970- author.

ISBN:

9781662507618

Personal Author:

Lourey, Jess, 1970- author.

Physical Description:

310 pages ; 22 cm

Series:

A Steinbeck and Reen thriller ; bk 1

Abstract:

"Summer 1980: Despite the local superstition that the Bendy Man haunts the woods, three girls go into a Minnesota forest. Only one comes out. Dead silent. Memory gone. No trace of her friends. The mystery of the Taken Ones captures the nation. Summer 2022: Cold case detective Van Reed and forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck are assigned a disturbing homicide - a woman buried alive, clutching a heart charm necklace belonging to one of the vanished girls. Van follows her gut. Harry trusts in facts. Their common ground is the need to catch a killer before he kills again. They have something else in common: each has ties to the original case in ways they're reluctant to share. As Van and Harry connect the crimes of the past and the present, Van struggles with memories of her own nightmarish childhood - and the fear that uncovering the truth of the Taken Ones will lead her down a path from which she, too, may never return." -- Back cover.

Subject Term:

Missing children -- Fiction.

Cold cases (Criminal investigation) -- Fiction.

Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction.

Forensic scientists -- Fiction.

Detective and mystery stories.

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
Searching... Sugar Grove - Todd Library	Paperback Book	PS3612 .O833 T35 2023	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

Two girls vanished. A woman buried alive. Between two crimes lie decades of secrets yet to be unearthed in a pulse-pounding novel by the Edgar Award-nominated author of Unspeakable Things .

Summer 1980: Despite the local superstition that the Bendy Man haunts the woods, three girls go into a Minnesota forest. Only one comes out, dead silent, her memory gone. The mystery of the Taken Ones captures the nation.

Summer 2022: Cold case detective Van Reed and forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck are assigned a disturbing homicide--a woman buried alive, clutching a heart charm necklace belonging to one of the vanished girls. Van follows her gut. Harry trusts in facts. They're both desperate to catch a killer before he kills again. They have something else in common: each has ties to the original case in ways they're reluctant to share.

As Van and Harry connect the crimes of the past and the present, Van struggles with memories of her own nightmarish childhood--and the fear that uncovering the truth of the Taken Ones will lead her down a path from which she, too, may never return.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

A police officer fights for her job and her life in this creepy psychological thriller. Agent Evangeline "Van" Reed grew up physically and mentally abused in a cult known as The Farm. Perhaps that's why she has premonitions that her former partner on the Minneapolis Police Department took seriously. After his death, she was forced out and now works cold cases for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, where she's mentoring Kyle Kaminski, whose early morning call about an odd homicide with a connection to a cold case plunges her into a nightmare. An unhoused person found and tried to rescue a woman buried alive but was too late. Since the lead detective on the case, Dave Comstock, was instrumental in forcing Van out of the MPD, she knows she's in for trouble. Guided by the findings of legendary crime scene processor Harry Steinbeck, the team thinks the victim is one of the Taken Ones--three girls who walked into the woods 15 miles northwest of Minneapolis in 1980, while only one, Rue Larsen, came out, too traumatized to remember anything. Near the body is a necklace that looks like one that belonged to Rue--half of a heart, whose other half was worn by one of her missing friends. All the while, Van's recurrent visions of children being tortured revive the bad memories of her own childhood. The original case of the missing girls was horrifying, and digging into the files disturbs Van's peace of mind, a state she attains only while volunteering at the animal shelter. Comstock, who's still her enemy, does what he can to make her look bad, but he's covering up some big mistakes of his own. Van's insights and some new forensic evidence may crack the case, but not before her life is almost destroyed. Twists and turns you don't see coming make for a real page-turner. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.