The Dark Corners of the Night

FBI Behavioral Analyst Caitlin Hendrix has been sent to Los Angeles to help investigate the serial killer, called The Midnight Man. He sneaks into houses in the middle of the night . kills the parents, but leaves children unharmed except for being terrorized. His attacks have escalated and Caitlin will have to relive her past in order to fix the present.

This is a roller coast of a ride, with twists and turns that swirl menacingly through a well written plot and deftly defined characters. Caitlin is a great character …. a dedicated profiler, seemingly unafraid, and what she does best is hunt serial killers. She wants justice for the victims.

The suspense starts at the very beginning and the pace is held steady until the surprising, unexpected conclusion. Although 3rd in the series, this can easily be read as a stand alone. I do recommend reading in order, though.

Many thanks to the author / Blackstone Publishing / Netgalley for the digital copy of this riveting crime fiction. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own .

“I am the legion of the night. I am beyond good and evil.”

This is the third book in this author’s UNSUB series. Most of the time I try to read the prior books before starting in the middle of a series but I’m finding that there are “just too many books and too little time.” I am quite sure I would enjoy the first two books but I found there was enough backstory in this one to really enjoy it.

This was a long book. A good portion of the time I will consider this as a negative – that the book is too bloated and should have been edited better. Not so in this case. I enjoyed every page of this thriller.

Caitlin Hendrix is still shaken up by events from six months prior that harmed her best friend and got her ATF boyfriend involved. So she’s still a bit on shaky ground when her and her colleagues of the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit are called to Lo s Angeles to profile an active serial killer known as the Midnight Man. This person is randomly selecting families at night, killing the parents and letting the children live.

Caitlin finds that this case is one of the worst she’s worked on plus it brings back memories of her own childhood.

I loved this book. I appreciated all the characters – they all had something to add to the storyline. I also liked how the author explored the L.A. area in depth.

I highly recommend this psychological thriller.

I received this book from Blackstone Publishing through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review.

Brilliant! Loved reading this book. Love this author never disappoin ts

Meg Gardiner never disappoints. The Midnight Man may be one of the scariest bad guys I’ve read. Just…wow.

A killer enters a home and kills the parents, leaving the children alive as witnesses. When this happens more than once, the FBI realizes they have a serial killer to deal with. Horrific scenes are the specialty for the special unit of the FBI that Caitlin Hendrix belongs to. Wherever the worst crimes happen, her unit must go and try to stop the killer. This is a compelling series. I missed book 2 somehow but found the characters interesting. I’m sure there will be more to come. Interesting twists

To say I loved this book is an understatement. Phenomenal. 3rd book in this series and, as always, Meg Gardiner, doesn’t disappoint. As with all her books, it is really well written and plotted. Stories are always gripping.

So, Caitlin…IS BACK! An FBI Behavioral Analyst who’s back in LA to profile a killer who’s killing parents and leaving the children alive. I mean, come on!!

Fantastic read. Check it out!

Meg Gardiner’s third book in the Unsub series again features Caitlin Hendrix, a former Bay Area, California detective who joined the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker, supplied the idea this installment. Ramirez terrorized Los Angeles and San Francisco neighborhoods when he committed home invasion robberies, rapes, and murders in the mid-1980s. He ultimately earned nineteen death sentences, but died in San Quentin State Prison in 2013 while still awaiting execution.

Stated simply, The Dark Corners of the NIght is terrifying . . . in the best possible way. The book is dark and richly atmospheric, the settings vitalized by Gardiner’s lushly descriptive prose. She sets scenes with details that evoke the mysteriousness and attendant fear of the wee small hours in which the crimes take place. An unsub enters family homes in low-crime neighborhoods where security is, in some manner, lax. There are not home security systems or dogs. Once inside, the parents wake up and discover him before they are murdered in cold blood, their bodies mutilated. But he spares the children. He leaves behind graphic messages and tableaus with which he declares his dominion over his victims. He ensures that the children see him and forces them to repeat mantras back to him such as “I am beyond good and evil,” telling them he is the Midnight Man before leaving the youngsters traumatized and orphaned.

Caitlin and her colleagues collaborate to understand his preparation, the similarities of the crime scenes, and motivation. He’s an outlier, but his knowledge of the neighborhoods he haunts, habits of his victims and, more particularly, police procedures not generally known to members of the public help the team assemble a profile that provides clues to his identity. He is stealthy and determined, and as the number of victims escalates, so does the pressure to catch him.

Caitlin is a compelling, empathetic character. It is not necessary to read the first two installments in the series in order to enjoy The Dark Corners of the Night because Gardiner provides enough background for readers to appreciate Caitlin’s experiences and fears. Her flaws are intriguing and provide context as she scrambles to identify and apprehend the killer before he can strike again. The case is extremely disturbing and brings into question Caitlin’s ability to withstand the stress of trying to stop such a brutal killer without losing her precarious equilibrium in the process. The Midnight Man is the darkest perpetrator she has ever encountered, and Caitlin battles inner demons, as well as the criminal at large. As the story progresses and the killer’s identity is revealed, Caitlin’s self-doubt ramps up the tension, consistent with Gardiner’s philosophy that the primary focus of her books should be on “the investigators — the people who dedicate themselves to putting away as many of these criminals as possible. . . the people who are taking on this burden on all of our behalves, to apprehend unsubs and bring them to justice and try to make the streets or the night at least briefly safer.” Toward that end, Gardiner’s cast of eccentric supporting characters, including Caitlin’s fellow law enforcement professionals, also keep the action moving and interesting. FBI Unit Chief C.J. Emmerich, the man who recruited Caitlin and is her boss, returns and plays a pivotal role as she grapples with the emotions the case evokes. Particularly endearing is twelve-year-old Hannah Guillory, the witness who is determined not to become another victim.

After Gardiner discloses the murderer’s identity, as well as his incentive to kill, the book’s already quick pace accelerates as Caitlin, et al. desperately rush to apprehend The Midnight Man and prevent him from claiming more victims. Gardiner deftly sets the final showdown at a downtown Los Angeles redevelopment project. The four-block site of abandoned office buildings and hotels scheduled to be demolished and replaced by loft apartments, office towers, and shopping areas provides the perfect backdrop against which Gardiner’s characters encounter enhanced dangers as they close in on the killer. Caitlin engages in a treacherous, winner-take-all strategy to apprehend the murderer.

Gardiner succeeds spectacularly at creating a compelling, frightening mystery that is completely absorbing and highly entertaining. The Dark Corners of the Night is sure to keep readers up late, telling themselves, “Just one more chapter” . . . hopefully, with the doors and windows locked, the home alarm system armed, and all of the lights on!

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader’s Copy of the book.

You don’t need to have read the other books in this series to enjoy this one, but hey, you might as well read them first. Especially if you love edge-of-your-seat suspense. Definitely recommend.

Thanks to edelweiss.com, Blackstone Publishing and author Meg Gardiner for the advance ARC copy for my honest review and I purchased it from amazon.com.

Also thanks to author Stephen King, who retweeted on twitter a post from the author Meg Gardiner, with his recommendation for her UNSUB series and it’s how I started reading the author.

‘The Dark Corners of the Night’, my first read from the author, liked that it sucks you in, plants you in the pages your tagging along with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit or BAU for short, you don’t want it to end, with two intertwining storylines that could be ripped out of today’s headlines, has the fast pace that I love and readers are in for a hellacious read.

What made the story even better, is that I liked every character in this one, feel that Meg Gardiner makes them good or bad life like, realistic, believable and it’s one of the WFS (To know what this means, you’ll have to read the book) that makes it so friggin’ good.

I found the whole process the team uses to come up with a profile, making a grid to be riveting, even that they revisited the crime scenes, along with the ceramic piece from spark plugs being used by the killer and it’s a good thing when you learn new things through reading.

Being a LivePD fan, the Caitlin Hendrix character made me think of Officer Alyssa Wright of the Jeffersonville Police Dept. she’s the badass cop that took down two people by herself and handcuffed one of them.

I feel like the readers actually meant to be the Caitlin Hendrix character, a damaged but one badass FBI agent, whose part of BAU, whose a mess, yet she has a tender side to her and the perfect role for Anna Kendrick. Should the UNSUB series become movies.

The author made a believe, realistic police procedural serial killer read, even has a tough little girl named Hannah take over the story at times, Rainy, Keyes, Emmerich, Sean, Sadie and Michelle and the LA Police detectives all add to the storyline. Really the two flaws with this one are the ending with the UNSUB and Caitlin self harming herself by cutting.

Definitely will be catching up with the first two books in this series, also will checkout the author’s other series and eagerly waiting the next UNSUB books.

Move over Jonathan Kellerman, there’s a new author in town and her name is Meg Gardiner. Hey Milo Sturgis, look out Caitlyn Hendrik is now my new favorite cop.