Now a fully-fledged private investigator, Sloane Donovan is bored by her latest task of keeping a debauched starlet alive and out of the headlines as she films a movie in Vancouver. When she and her partner Wayne Capson are contacted by a grieving mother looking to resurrect the cold case of her missing daughter, Sloane finds herself inexorably drawn into a clandestine world of disappearing girls, illegal narcotics and loose ends dating back forty years. Careening from the hardest edges of the city to creepy rural backroads where cries go unheard, Sloane's relentless quest places the people closest to her at risk, while her own personal demons threaten to devour her. Lightning-paced and unputdownable, Call of the Void cements Sloane Donovan's position amid the new generation of hard-boiled sleuths.
Two years ago I was utterly blown away by Jeremy Siemens’ debut novel TO THOSE WHO KILLED ME. As of this afternoon, his follow up novel CALL OF THE VOID blew me away again. Jeremy faces down dark, hardboiled subject matter and never flinches. Part of the story takes place in an area I spent five years of my youth in. It can be a very dark place (serious Rural Noir territory to rival Appalachia or the Deep South) and Jerrmy captures that darkness like he was local to the area.
There is a wealth of world-class crime writers in British Columbia and Jeremy is among them, setting a high bar for those of us coming up. Damn him, and bless him. Full disclosure, I know the author — but my five star review is not a friendly pay it forward for a buddy. Jeremy is a wordsmith and craftsman. Read this if you like Block, Rankin, or Connolly, and I do not make those comparisons lightly.
A compelling crime read that had me speculating, tensing up, and needing to know. I enjoyed the strong sense of place created and the interesting characters. Having read the first in the series, I was already connected from the beginning, appreciating the nods to Sloane’s history, and I will read any future works that may appear.
Gritty, unrelenting, and at-times merciless, Sloane Donovan’s newest adventure is a must-read for fans of cold cases and hard-boiled detectives/PIs. (Especially for Canadian readers)