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Darkness Falls
Twenty years ago, her brother was murdered. Tonight, she's found his killer.Thessaly Hanlon is four hours into a long drive home through the night when she pulls into a 24-hour roadside diner to take a break. She's exhausted, but when she hears a chillingly familiar voice from the next booth, she wonders if he'll ever sleep again.The voice is unmistakable. It belongs to Casper Sturgis, the man who murdered Thessaly's brother two decades before, and then disappeared without a trace.Thessaly makes the decision to follow the killer. As Thessaly begins to unravel the second life of Casper Sturgis, she finds that digging into the past can have deadly consequences...
291 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 16, 2021
2 people are currently reading
45 people want to read
About the author
Alex Knight
3 books21 followersAlex Knight was born in Glasgow and studied English at the University of Stirling. He works as a systems administrator by day, and writes thrillers by night. Alex lives near Glasgow with his wife and three children.
Hunted is published by Orion Books in the UK, March 4, 2021
Hunted is published by Orion Books in the UK, March 4, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
September 16, 2021
This is the second book from Alex Knight following last year's Hunted, which I loved. They are both standalones so you don't need to worry which order you read them in but I would recommend you read them both.
Darkness Falls follows the fabulously named Thessaly Hanlon. Although 20 years have passed, she still remembers the night her brother as murdered as if it was yesterday. And she remembers the man who murdered him just as clearly. He disappeared after that might and has never been caught. On a dreadful night, with awful weather which reminded me of a wet Glasgow evening, she pulls off the road at a small rest stop diner to get dry and drink coffee. All that changes when she heard the voice of Casper Sturgis, the man who killed her brother. The police don't take an active interest, after all it's a twenty year old crime and only a brief sighting, but Thessaly can't let it lie and sets out to find Sturgis herself.
It's a fantastic opening and the pace never lets up. This is a cat and mouse chase with a difference - here the mouse is chasing the cat, and taking all kinds of risks to do so. I loved Thessaly. She's strong, intelligent and determined to get justice for her brother. She doesn't always make good choices, but who does? She's really well written, believable. One thing I love about this book is that it's populated by strong women. In fact, men, with one notable exception, don't come out of this well at all. As well as Thessaly, there is Casey, a scared wife who wants to do right by her son, Washington, a dogged police officer who becomes involved, even Kayla, a young waitress who goes out of her way to help Thessaly. All beautifully written, perfectly rounded characters. To be fair, all the guys are brilliant characters too, just not necessarily one's I'd want to share a beer with...
I don't want to say too much about the plot for fear of spoilers. I'll just say that tracking down Sturgis is not a simple task, and Thessaly puts herself in peril more than once. The whole thing has a tense claustrophobic feel about. This comes, partly, I think, from the incredibly exciting denouement, and partly because the number of key players is so small.
Darkness Falls is a tense, exciting, intelligent, fast paced, action filled crime thriller populated by well rounded characters. It's an absolute banger & I highly recommend it.
Darkness Falls follows the fabulously named Thessaly Hanlon. Although 20 years have passed, she still remembers the night her brother as murdered as if it was yesterday. And she remembers the man who murdered him just as clearly. He disappeared after that might and has never been caught. On a dreadful night, with awful weather which reminded me of a wet Glasgow evening, she pulls off the road at a small rest stop diner to get dry and drink coffee. All that changes when she heard the voice of Casper Sturgis, the man who killed her brother. The police don't take an active interest, after all it's a twenty year old crime and only a brief sighting, but Thessaly can't let it lie and sets out to find Sturgis herself.
It's a fantastic opening and the pace never lets up. This is a cat and mouse chase with a difference - here the mouse is chasing the cat, and taking all kinds of risks to do so. I loved Thessaly. She's strong, intelligent and determined to get justice for her brother. She doesn't always make good choices, but who does? She's really well written, believable. One thing I love about this book is that it's populated by strong women. In fact, men, with one notable exception, don't come out of this well at all. As well as Thessaly, there is Casey, a scared wife who wants to do right by her son, Washington, a dogged police officer who becomes involved, even Kayla, a young waitress who goes out of her way to help Thessaly. All beautifully written, perfectly rounded characters. To be fair, all the guys are brilliant characters too, just not necessarily one's I'd want to share a beer with...
I don't want to say too much about the plot for fear of spoilers. I'll just say that tracking down Sturgis is not a simple task, and Thessaly puts herself in peril more than once. The whole thing has a tense claustrophobic feel about. This comes, partly, I think, from the incredibly exciting denouement, and partly because the number of key players is so small.
Darkness Falls is a tense, exciting, intelligent, fast paced, action filled crime thriller populated by well rounded characters. It's an absolute banger & I highly recommend it.
January 29, 2023
This is the first book I have read by Alex Knight (or Mason Cross for that matter) but it definitely won't be the last. I must admit that I was completely intrigued by the premise when the author spoke about it at Bute Noir, but I still didn't know quite what to expect. One of my friends was hugely enthusiastic and I can absolutely see why. This book grabbed me from the start and refused to let go, with a blistering pace and sense of urgency that kept me rapt to the very last page.
A chance rest break finds Thessaly Hanlon within spitting distance of the man she believes murdered her brother some twenty years earlier, Casper Sturgis. What follows is Thessaly's attempt to uncover where Sturgis has been hiding and to bring his to justice for the murder he skipped out on all those years before. Now, if it was as simple as calling the police and Sturgis being arrested in a roadside diner this would be a very short book. Thankfully, for readers if not Thessaly, it's not that simple and what follows is a tense, unpredictable and often surprising tale in which a killer is hidden in plain sight and is willing to do almost anything to protect his new life.
I really liked Thessaly as a character. A brilliant, determined and strong female lead, she is so focused on finding Sturgis that her own safety almost becomes a secondary concern. Whilst she does the right thing and engages the help of the police, her understandable frustration at their inaction sees her take matters into her own hands. I liked her feisty nature, and her certainty that she had found her man was infectious, even if those around her didn't entirely believe her. Alex Knight has done a superb job of drawing us into her world and capturing readers attention and I found I was unquestioning in my belief in her certainty. She was exactly the kind of character I could champion and I wanted to see her come good.
As for Sturgis, or the man she believes to be Sturgis, there is something menacing and dark about his character, even though we see little of him in the early pages of the book. Perhaps it is how he is portrayed, or simply his size and stature, the overwhelming confidence he seems to exude, that lets you know he should be kept at arms length, or maybe it is Thessaly's certainty of his guilt, but the author has really managed to make a relatively unseen character feel undoubtedly threatening. Then there is his wife, Casey, who knows nothing of Thessaly's assertions about her husband, and who has her own issues to deal with. I felt her character to be really authentic, the fear that rippled just beneath the surface adding agency to her element of the story.
There are moments where I found I needed to just go with the flow, certain aspects of the story where you could see we were being set up for something crucial in the coming chapters, but the exact whys and wherefores did not play out quite as I expected. There is a degree of uncertainty surrounding the whole case, scenarios in which is appears that not everyone is on the level and that the threat posed to Thessaly may be coming from more than just Sturgis.
The timing of the narrative is top class, driving the story along at a real fast pace, and the further into the story we move, the more urgency you can feel come to bear on what is happening. Setting is perfect, the kind of small town USA that allows certain things to go unchecked, remote enough to keep Sturgis off anyone's radar, but large enough to allow anonymity. Having live in small town USA, Alex Knight captured the spirit of these communities well and i had a real sense of place whilst reading. Told from the points of view of Thessaly, Casey and Sturgis, this is a book that really got me excited, and had me on tenterhooks as we move swiftly towards a really dramatic and shocking final showdown.
If this is what to expect from this author, I'm definitely signing up for more. A top notch thriller that was right up my white picket fenced street.
A chance rest break finds Thessaly Hanlon within spitting distance of the man she believes murdered her brother some twenty years earlier, Casper Sturgis. What follows is Thessaly's attempt to uncover where Sturgis has been hiding and to bring his to justice for the murder he skipped out on all those years before. Now, if it was as simple as calling the police and Sturgis being arrested in a roadside diner this would be a very short book. Thankfully, for readers if not Thessaly, it's not that simple and what follows is a tense, unpredictable and often surprising tale in which a killer is hidden in plain sight and is willing to do almost anything to protect his new life.
I really liked Thessaly as a character. A brilliant, determined and strong female lead, she is so focused on finding Sturgis that her own safety almost becomes a secondary concern. Whilst she does the right thing and engages the help of the police, her understandable frustration at their inaction sees her take matters into her own hands. I liked her feisty nature, and her certainty that she had found her man was infectious, even if those around her didn't entirely believe her. Alex Knight has done a superb job of drawing us into her world and capturing readers attention and I found I was unquestioning in my belief in her certainty. She was exactly the kind of character I could champion and I wanted to see her come good.
As for Sturgis, or the man she believes to be Sturgis, there is something menacing and dark about his character, even though we see little of him in the early pages of the book. Perhaps it is how he is portrayed, or simply his size and stature, the overwhelming confidence he seems to exude, that lets you know he should be kept at arms length, or maybe it is Thessaly's certainty of his guilt, but the author has really managed to make a relatively unseen character feel undoubtedly threatening. Then there is his wife, Casey, who knows nothing of Thessaly's assertions about her husband, and who has her own issues to deal with. I felt her character to be really authentic, the fear that rippled just beneath the surface adding agency to her element of the story.
There are moments where I found I needed to just go with the flow, certain aspects of the story where you could see we were being set up for something crucial in the coming chapters, but the exact whys and wherefores did not play out quite as I expected. There is a degree of uncertainty surrounding the whole case, scenarios in which is appears that not everyone is on the level and that the threat posed to Thessaly may be coming from more than just Sturgis.
The timing of the narrative is top class, driving the story along at a real fast pace, and the further into the story we move, the more urgency you can feel come to bear on what is happening. Setting is perfect, the kind of small town USA that allows certain things to go unchecked, remote enough to keep Sturgis off anyone's radar, but large enough to allow anonymity. Having live in small town USA, Alex Knight captured the spirit of these communities well and i had a real sense of place whilst reading. Told from the points of view of Thessaly, Casey and Sturgis, this is a book that really got me excited, and had me on tenterhooks as we move swiftly towards a really dramatic and shocking final showdown.
If this is what to expect from this author, I'm definitely signing up for more. A top notch thriller that was right up my white picket fenced street.
January 15, 2023
Meh. Just okay. It’s full of clichés but that wasn’t what bothered me. It’s the plot holes and poor characterisations. The main character is after a guy who murdered her brother 20 years before, who was previously untraceable. Seeking answers for two decades, you’d think she’d be careful not to risk anything to mess this up. Yet she’s tipping him off in like 5 seconds. It's so implausible and irritating. She bungles everything at the first opportunity by going after him in the most obvious ways. Befriends the guy’s new wife. Goes to his house which is covered in cameras. Everything that could ruin her chance of getting justice. The book is rife with stupid decisions but then other times she's cautious. The female characters are written devoid of any basic common sense. The protagonist had a very unusual name – Thessaly – yet she goes round using it, sticking out like a sore thumb. She could have at least given a fake name. Give the reader some credit. Then the whole business with the witness protection program. Not one, but two cops, giving out privileged information. And the writing, which described things bit by bit unnecessarily, didn't help. The only thing that kept me reading was the cat and mouse element. The rest of it read like a B-movie.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 24, 2024
Thessaly se neko noč ustavi v obcestni okrepčevalnici. Glas, ki ga zasliši, medtem, ko zbira moči za nadalnjo pot, je glas, ki ga je slišala tisto noč, ko je bil ubit njen brat. Glas morilca jo spodbudi k raziskovanju...
Čisto spodoben kriminalni roman z veliko in dobrimi zapleti in razpleti. Nič več od tega, a za krajšanje nekaj uric čisto dovolj.
Čisto spodoben kriminalni roman z veliko in dobrimi zapleti in razpleti. Nič več od tega, a za krajšanje nekaj uric čisto dovolj.
August 24, 2023
Another interesting sleuthing adventure with a female lead that I enjoyed. It was a bit slow in parts, but the anxiety built up throughout until the harrowing climax. Good entertaining story of getting retribution and revenge for the loss of a loved one. Recommend.
April 1, 2022
A cracking thriller
April 7, 2022
Really great thriller lots of twists and turns
September 22, 2022
Well-written, page turner thriller. Hard to put down....
June 7, 2024
Konec kot v ameriški akciji...
September 21, 2025
Its a great thriller and kept me well entertained, I expected more after really enjoying Hunted and it didn’t grip me the same way.
That said the last chapters flew by and pace was non stop.
That said the last chapters flew by and pace was non stop.
November 19, 2025
the most enjoyable part of this book was when they story was from Casey's perspective. I felt parts became boring and slow and the ending was extremely far fetched for my liking
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews