The Taken Ones
The Taken Ones (Steinbeck & Reed #1)
By: Jess Lourey
This book was a nice surprise! I had not read Lourey before so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
It was a suspenseful police procedural without a lot of swearing, plus a couple twists and a cliffhanger ending!
This is the first in a series with two main characters working cases together through Minnesota’s BCA (Bureau of Criminal Apprehension) in their cold case unit. But they couldn’t be any more different.
Van (Evangeline) Reed: comes from a traumatic childhood being raised in a cult; copes with her past by being dirty and messy; follows hunches
“There was messy and then there was hazardous, and I’d always managed to stay on the razor’s edge between the two.”
Harry Steinbeck: straight-laced, clean and proper, follows facts
“According to Harry Steinbeck certainty was the death of truth.”
“Harry looked like he’d just returned from a spa experience. That was how he always looked.”
I’m not sure if Van was super likable yet, but there is character development and she shows signs of change by the end that I think will be to her benefit. Plus, you can hardly blame her dysfunction when you take into account the abuse she endured growing up in the cult for so long.
It’s a little bit hard to believe she can be successful at a high intensity job with her internal struggles, but I suppose it adds to her persona and makes for an interesting series.
It reminds me a bit of Mike Omer’s Abby Mullen series where the main character also survived a cult and became a hostage negotiator, using her trauma to propel her to save people in her career.
One aspect of the book that readers may or may not like is a bit of a supernatural thing. Van has dreams that are actually visions, often about crimes. In the past she told her previous partner, Bart, about them and they would go through proper channels to act on them and solve cases.
Bart has passed away and Van is alone with her visions and struggling with how to handle them without crossing any procedural lines. Can she trust Harry with such hard-to-believe information without it costing her her job?
I’m not usually a fan of this type of trope— visions— but it actually worked okay in this book. There’s not like a good explanation for it, but it’s just part of what the series is and the suspense comes with her knowing certain information but still having to figure out why it matters and how everything connects. Like the show Early Edition but without the cat. And the ‘vision crime’ was the secondary plot in the story so they were also doing normal police type work, not just waiting around for visions.
Plot Summary
The book begins in 1980 with the abduction of two little girls from the woods. Three girls went in, only one came out. And she didn’t speak for weeks afterwards. The trauma of what she saw sealed in her memories. The case of The Taken Ones went cold.
Now in present day, the case is reopened after police are called into a crime scene where a woman was found buried alive. Though a homeless man tried to dig her out, he didn’t get to her in time. But one piece of evidence connects her to the case from years ago— the necklace that one of the girls had been wearing when they were taken. Is she one of them?
And if she was, and they’ve been alive this whole time, can they find the other woman before the abductor buries her as well?
While Reed is chasing down leads to The Taken Ones case, she is also experiencing visions of a woman who has chained up kids in her basement.
Reed is on a short leash because the police officer she is paired with is an old colleague who betrayed her when she used to be with the MPD and it doesn’t help that his name comes up in the investigation from back then. She has her work cut out for her!
Comments
The villain in this book has a condition called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome— think contortionist. Which is a pretty freaky trait for a villain. Someone who can contort their body and fit into small, hard-to-see places, or escape certain scenarios. Someone who bends in weird ways and ‘reassembles’ themselves. So that was a unique aspect of the story that makes for a thrill.
It reminded me of the book I recently read called, Dark Corners, where the villain had a (real) condition that made him have body odor that smelled like garbage. I like when authors come up with ways to use obscure facts and turn them into plot points.
Trigger warning for child abuse. Van was raised on Frank’s Farm where she endured a variety of abuse and punishments. Those parts were hard to read and will make your blood boil. But knowing she escaped makes it a little better. However, apparently Frank is MIA and I would be surprised if he doesn’t show up in a later book.
Recommendation
I would definitely recommend this book. I’m always happy to find good thriller writers that don’t feel the need to use f-bombs every other page.
The twist partway through really threw me for a loop. And we find out at the end that Harry may have a secret of his own. I’ve got to be on the look out for the next book, because you bet I’m going to find out what that secret is!
**Received a copy from MB Communications in exchange for an honest review*
[Content Advisory: handful of swear words, maybe 1 f-word; accounts of abuse]
This book released September 19, 2023. You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
Share this book review to your social media!