Darkness Falls

A scarred British private eye investigates a cold case in Bryndza’s third Kate Marshall mystery (following Shadow Sands). Twelve years after journalist Joanna Duncan walked into a parking garage and vanished, her mother hires Kate’s struggling new detective agency to solve the mystery. Kate, a former Met officer, works with new business partner Tristan Harper, a young gay man, to investigate the disappearance. The duo discover that Joanna had been reporting a muckraking political scandal when she disappeared; her article would have outed a former Member of Parliament as a gay man. In the course of her research, Jessica had also learned of two young men who vanished in 1999 and 2000; Kate takes up Jessica’s investigation of the missing men and helps police identify similarities in the murders of several other victims, including a recent death. It’s at this point that the police take over the case (presumed to be a set of serial murders) and arrest a suspect, though Kate and Tristan aren’t convinced that this person is responsible for Joanna’s disappearance. A journalist and a politician provide the clues that lead to a shocking conclusion.