I’m an outlier. While psychological thrillers have been popular in the last couple years, I’m not a fan. I don’t like unreliable narrators. And, I am not interested in serial killer novels that get inside the mind of a killer. Give me a traditional mystery or a police procedural. Anne Frasier managed to catch my attention with Find Me, though, a thriller that touched on a serial killer, an unreliable character, and was more twisted and surprising than I expected. Instead of focusing on the killer or the killer’s dead victims, she introduces two broken people who come together as a result of their childhood traumas.
In the 1990s, the Inland Empire Killer terrorized and killed women in southern California. He was caught when a woman survived, and recognized him. But, his notoriety grew when it was discovered that Benjamin Wayne Fisher used his young daughter, Reni, as bait. He’s been in San Quentin for thirty years, and hasn’t seen his daughter since the day he was arrested. But, when he calls Homicide detective Daniel Ellis to the prison, he has a proposition for him. He’ll take him to the Mojave Desert and show him where the bodies are if Reni will come along. Of course, a manipulator like Fisher has a motive. Daniel Ellis also has his reasons for agreeing to Fisher’s demands.
But, Reni doesn’t like the pressure. She was an FBI profiler until she had a breakdown and quit three years earlier. She moved back to the desert, and, for the last years, she’s been trying to find where the bodies are. While she believes she was just an innocent child, some call her complicit in the murders. There are times she doubts herself, and doesn’t know what the truth is. If she meets with her father, she may find the truth.
Both Daniel and Reni are troubled protagonists. They are the focus of this novel, with the damage inflicted on them as young, vulnerable children. They grew up to go into law enforcement, still searching for answers, for the truth. These two intriguing characters are the reason to pick up this intense novel.
Find Me twists back on itself and comes with surprises. The reader will find the answers as surprising as Daniel and Reni do. But, before they can discover the truth, they’ll become entangled one more time in a master manipulator’s games.
Anne Frasier’s website is www.annefrasier.com
Find Me by Anne Frasier. Thomas & Mercer, 2020. ISBN 9781542005623 (paperback), 286p.
*****
FTC Full Disclosure – I received a .pdf to read for a journal.
If you're an outlier, so am I. GONE GIRL, WOMAN IN THE WINDOW, etc. are not for me. Give me a real mystery.
Right there with you, Jeff. Those are not for me.
I'm not a big fan myself, but for a while, I won a large number of psychological thrillers from goodreads. I didn't really like most of them, but there were a couple that managed to rise above.
This one had an unusual twist, Glen. Or, at least it was unusual for me since I don't usually read these books.
Not my kind of read either, and since it isn't at my library now I will not even try it. I'm finding Ghosts of Harvard a bit dark, but I will keep plugging, at least for a while longer.
I was curious, Gram. I'm not a fan of books with characters who deal with mental issues. I lived with that with my mother-in-law.