In this relentless thriller from the Edgar-nominated author of The Taken Ones, unorthodox BCA agent Evangeline “Van” Reed and by-the-book forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck are reunited to catch a cold case killer who’s back, abducting a small town’s children one by one.

Fall 1998: When a family is brutally slain in the tightknit Finnish community of Alku, all signs point to Matty the Mallet as the murderer. The only problem? He’s serving two consecutive life sentences at the nearby nursing home for serial killers.

Spring 2023: Agent Harry Steinbeck hopes never to return to northern Minnesota, a place that holds terrible memories of his sister’s abduction. But when a recent homicide is connected to Alku’s unsolved mass murder, he and cold case agent Evangeline Reed must journey north to investigate.

Where they quickly realize that something is very wrong in Alku.

When local children begin to disappear, just as his own sister did twenty-five years earlier, the darkest corners of Harry’s past begin to collide with the present as he learns a troubling truth: it takes a village to keep a secret.