Rachel Krall, the true crime podcaster star of Megan Goldin’s bestseller The Night Swim,returns in this electrifying new thriller to search for a popular influencer who disappears after visiting a suspected serial killer.
DARK CORNERS
by Megan Goldin
St. Martin’s Press, August 2023
(via The Gernert Company)
Terence Bailey is about to be released from prison for breaking and entering, though investigators have long suspected him in the murders of six women. As his release date approaches, Bailey gets a surprise visit from Maddison Logan, a hot, young influencer with a huge social media following. Hours later, Maddison disappears, and police suspect she’s been kidnapped―or worse. Is Maddison’s disappearance connected to her visit to Bailey? And why was she visiting him in the first place?
When they hit a wall in the investigation, the FBI reluctantly asks for Rachel Krall’s help in finding the missing influencer. Maddison seems to only exist on social media; she has no family, no friends, and other than in her posts, most people have never seen her. Who is she, really? Using a fake Instagram account, Rachel goes undercover to BuzzCon, a popular influencer conference, where she discovers a world of fierce rivalry that may have turned lethal.
When police find the body of a woman with a tattoo of a snake eating its tail―identical to a tattoo Rachel had seen on Bailey’s hand―the FBI must consider a chilling possibility: Bailey has an accomplice on the outside and a dangerous obsession with influencers, including Rachel Krall herself. Suddenly the target of a monster hiding in plain sight, Rachel is forced to confront the very real dangers that lurk in the dark corners of the internet.
Megan Goldin, author of The Escape Room and The Night Swim, worked as a correspondent for Reuters and other media outlets where she covered war, peace, international terrorism and financial meltdowns in the Middle East and Asia. She is now based in Melbourne, Australia where she raises three sons and is a foster mum to Labrador puppies learning to be guide dogs.
When criminal barrister, Justine Stone, is handed the lead on her first murder case, she could never have imagined she’d find Jake Reynolds staring back at her. Jake Reynolds – the boyfriend who disappeared from her life twelve years ago and the same man now facing a double homicide charge. Since Jake left without a trace, Justine hasn’t returned to the rural Essex town, Maldon, where they grew up together. But, if she’s going to send Jake to prison for murder, this time she needs to know the truth – not just the story she’ll spin the jury.
Living in a ski resort town in the middle of the Colorado Rockies should be paradise, but deputy David Wolf is stretched thin hunting a missing person and dealing with his ex-wife coming back into the picture. All that trouble drops to the wayside, however, when he gets word his brother has died half a world away while traveling in northern Italy.
Taxidermist Sonja lives all on her own deep in the woods. She avoids all human contact like the plague, and the inhabitants of the nearby village are in any case convinced she’s a witch. Her clientele is mostly rather suspect, and many of the jobs they give her are unpleasant and illegal. When she meets a young man and feels herself falling for him, she decides to escape her hermit’s life. To do that, she first has to take on one last well-paid and very, very illegal job. But then long-buried trauma and family secrets raise their head – and soon she is not the only one who’s in mortal danger…