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.