Book Review: The Taken Ones by Jess Lourey

The Taken Ones
Author: Jess Lourey
Series: Steinbeck and Reed (Book 1)
Publication: Thomas & Mercer (September 19, 2023)

Description: 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.

My Thoughts: Cold Case detective Van Reed of the BCA finds danger and begins to come to terms with her own very troubled past when she is assigned to look into the case of two young girls who go missing in Leech Lake, Minnesota, on a sunny summer day in 1980. 

The case gets more complicated when the body of a woman buried alive is found in a secluded part of Minneapolis in the summer of 2022 and she proves to be one of the girls not seen since 1980. Van, who was a former member of the Minneapolis Police Department before joining the BCA, is forced to work with a detective who was instrumental in freezing her out of the MPD. He also has a connection to the Leech Lake case which he isn't eager to share.

Van works with forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck who is her polar opposite. He is meticulous in his methods and personal appearance; she's prone to hunches and lives surrounded by garbage. However, the two play off each other well and have some hidden similarities which come out in the story.

As Van investigates those witnesses who are still alive and retraces the crime, she suffers flashbacks of her own childhood when she was raised in a cult run by an obsessive patriarch. She only got out when the cult's leader was arrested and jailed for tax evasion. Van began having prophetic visions while still in the cult. They have sometimes helped her with her police work, but they have also led her to vigilantism where she has killed people she wasn't able to bring to justice through the legal system.

This was an interesting mystery with intriguing characters including a very creepy villain. I enjoyed the characters and the setting. I liked seeing a new relationship beginning for Van and Harry. 

Favorite Quote:

I jerked my head to the side, sending sleep-ratted hair into my face, trying to erase the image of the terrified infant. At least it hadn't been as bad as the nightmare it had displaced, I'd give it that. Of course, like Bart used to say, that was like winning the tallest leprechaun award.

Better bad is still bad, kid.

I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.