UNSUB: A Novel by Meg Gardiner

UNSUB: A Novel. Meg Gardiner. Penguin Publishing Group. June 2017. 384 pp. ISBN #: 9781101985526.

Mercury, the Prophet, the Messenger is a serial killer.  He’s been silent since the 1990s but now has returned in malicious, blood-curdling ways.  His first killing in years is a double homicide, accompanied by his message pounded into his victims’ chests.  UNSUB stands for unknown subject.  

Detective Caitlin Hendrix cannot believe he has returned and is obsessed with finding him.  Her problem is that this killer is responsible for undoing her own father’s sanity and yet her father is probably the one who truly knows the psyche of this killer.  But insisting he unload all he holds in his mind may enable them to find the killer but destroy her father in the process. His partner had died in that investigation years ago and he had tried to kill himself.  This is obviously no mundane, predictable killer!

Clues begin to make sense, as more deaths occur and the killer sets his sights on Caitlin.  Caitlin seems like a vulnerable woman instead of an intrepid detective.  Her anxiety and fear of getting sucked into the power and control of this killer keeps the reader on edge as much as the grisly details of the killings set the reader’s psyche on shaky ground.  The plot’s intensity increases as Caitlin and other detectives figure out the time and even place where the next killing will occur but something always goes awry so they fail to nail the psychopathic killer.

The Prophet has some kind of affinity to the poet Dante and his famous work, The Inferno.  However, even knowing that doesn’t enable the reader to predict what the killer is thinking, feeling and how he will next act.

This is a superb psychological thriller that forces readers’ adrenaline to flow galore.  The twist at the end of the story makes one gasp with shock, an ending that guarantees a sequel to this novel.  Deftly plotted, Meg Gardiner!  We look forward to the follow-up to this amazing crime novel!

The Shadow Tracer by Meg Gardiner

The Shadow Tracer.  Meg Gardiner.  Dutton: Penguin Group (USA). June 2013. 368 pp. hbk. ISBN #: 9780525953227.

Sarah Keller is a “skip tracer,” a person who finds people who have attempted to do everything possible to hide, from subpoenas, arrest, whatever it is that demands secrecy and constant moving, a life of living one step ahead of the pursuer.  Sarah is very, very good at what she does.  But before her job comes her passionate love for her daughter, Zoe; at least that’s what she tells anyone who asks.  Zoe and Sarah have a very special bond that is now threatened to completely unravel!

Right after Sarah serves a subpoena on someone she had tracked relentlessly, Zoe is injured in a bus accident.  After being taken to the hospital, the examination reveals two shocking revelations that seem to prove that Sarah is not really Zoe’s mother and may be a murderer as well.  Now, the hunter becomes the hunted, and the two, with the help of a friend, Danisha, speedily exit from Oklahoma.  They are not only being pursued by the FBI and the Oklahoma police, because of another related murder as well, but her ex-boyfriend Nolan’s family are in on the chase as well.

Nolan’s father is a self-appointed, sociopathic prophet who is a polygamist, murderer, fanatic, thief, dictator, wife and child abuser, and just about every other negative label one can imagine.  But one can’t just write him off as he views rebellion as treachery and insists on the absolute punishment – death – to all who cross his sick vision and decisions.  He wants Zoe now and has put something inside her that will enable him to easily find her – that is his family and followers will as he’s presently locked in a maximum security prison.

So the chase grows more and more intense as friend and foe get closer to Sarah and Zoe.  There are other threads within this story in which friend becomes foe and vice versa.  Every page is filled with high drama and one comes to admire Sarah for her fervor in protecting Zoe and eluding her pursuers.  No, it doesn’t think the way the reader believes it will; instead it leaves the reader wondering if there will be a another hair-raising sequel to this gripping story.

The Shadow Tracer is great crime fiction, a simple plot with many unexpected twists and turns, enough adrenaline-pumping action to keep a reader up all night during and after one’s non-stop reading, and very real scenarios that partially bear truth to realistic stories that have been in the news in the last twenty-five years.  Get ready for a rollicking roller coaster ride – Meg Gardiner knows how to spin a deadly mystery/crime novel!! Great read!