What You Don't Know

December 12, 2016
Set in Denver, Chaney’s unsettling, well-crafted first novel opens in December 2008, when homicide detectives Ralph Loren and Paul Hoskins arrest creepy Jacky Seever, a successful restaurateur, after a search of the crawl space in the home that he shares with his wife, Gloria, turns up bodies of murder victims going back decades. The subsequent investigation is covered by newspaper reporter Samantha “Sammie” Peterson, whose extramarital affair with Hoskins grants her special access. “It’ll never be over,” the incarcerated Seever predicts, and so it proves seven winters later when Carrie Simms, who escaped Seever in 2008, is murdered, along with others connected to the original case. The methodology mirrors Seever’s, including his trademark removal of one or more of the victims’ fingers, a fact that was never released to the public. All the point-of-view characters—Hoskins, Sammie, Grace—are tragically flawed in believable ways, though the flat, untidy ending may leave some readers feeling frustrated. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Gernet Company.

December 1, 2016
A deranged serial killer is captured and brought to justice. That's usually the end of a good thriller, but it's the start of this unusually thoughtful first novel, which relies more on character studies than gory details.As the book opens, a string of murders in Denver is definitively pinned on Jacky Seever, a respected restaurant owner who's been stashing victims in his crawl space. But the cops who capture him are no paragons themselves: Detective Ralph Loren has an abusive temper and a strange fascination with Seever, to the point of dressing up in his clothes. His long-suffering partner, Paul Hoskins, is also prone to violent mood swings. His sometime lover is Sammie Peterson, a journalist whose career is made by the exclusive Seever stories Hoskins feeds her. Everyone is still scarred when the story resumes after seven years: Seever is in jail, Loren is still on the force, Hoskins has been demoted after one of his outbursts. Having lost her connection for news exclusives, Sammie is now selling makeup in a mall. And Denver suddenly sees a new string of murders that look suspiciously like Seever's. This time the suspects include Seever's wife, Gloria, who managed to stay oblivious while the bodies were being buried. The pace is unusually slow for a thriller with no grisly murder scenes, but that's part of the book's strength. It's the escalating psychological tension and the interactions of three-dimensional characters that lift this well above the serial-killer norm.

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January 1, 2017

When Jacky Seever is arrested and sentenced to death for the brutal murder of 31 people, the Denver community is relieved to end this gruesome nightmare. But for three people intimately involved, there is no closure. How will Hoskins, the detective who solved the case, continue after witnessing such depravity? Can Sammie Peterson, the star reporter who covered the crime, ever find another story to match this explosive one? And how will Seever's wife, Gloria, who lived with a sadistic madman for decades, reconcile herself to the truth? This debut novel, in graphic and coarse detail, follows the lives of these three damaged protagonists. When seven years later a copycat killer begins butchering people linked to the original case, the trio are caught in a hellish sort of deja vu with old and new horrors to confront. With an increasing sense of dread, readers are taken on a suspenseful and gruesome ride, and Chaney does an excellent job of keeping us guessing until the final page. VERDICT Full of unlikable and fatally flawed characters, this bleak and seedy tale is a fit for those drawn to gritty police procedurals and character-driven mysteries.--Amy Nolan, St. Joseph, MI

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2016
Denver detective Paul Hoskins wasn't a victim of serial killer Jacky Seeverhe cracked the casebut he has wounds of his own. He had been a different man before Seever. A better man. But Seever had managed to rip that part of him out, with his teeth. Sammie Peterson was the ace reporter who broke the story about the 33 bodies found in the crawl space of Jacky Seever's house. She is now taking antidepressants and selling cosmetics. Hoskins and Peterson are just two of many well-drawn characters, good and evil, created by debut novelist Chaney. Seever was convicted and is in prison awaiting execution. Seven years have passed, and there is a new guy in town, the Secondhand Killer, whose crimes are frightfully similar to those of Seever. Hoskins and Peterson are inevitably drawn into the investigation. This is a grim story, the language is tough, and the setting is bleak with whiffs of decay, but it is a thrilling read in the tradition of Jeffery Deaver's The Bone Collector (1997)although fingers, not bones, are the killer's memento of choice.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)