It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.
–Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio; from the epigraph of Before He Finds Her
Michael Kardos published his debut novel The Three-Day Affair in 2012, announcing himself on the thriller scene with an attention-grabbing hook. After stopping at a convenience store, three old friends watch in astonishment as one of their group pulls a woman out of the store and screams “Drive!” as he throws her into the car. In this book, the implausibilities of the scenario didn’t occur to me as I was reading. Kardos is that good at telling stories, and creating characters reacting naturally in unnatural situations.
Now, in his follow-up, Before He Finds Her, Kardos once again asks readers to suspend their disbelief to get an ultimate thrill. Ramsey Miller, a fatalistic truck driver, murdered his wife in 1991. His three-year-old daughter, Meg, survived. The murderous Miller was never caught. Meg is now Melanie Denison, and under the watchful eye of her aunt and uncle, she has led a sheltered life (why all the “M” names? I’m not sure). Her dad is still out there, a murderer-at-large.
But Meg/Melanie is about to turn 18, and she is tired of living in fear. She wants the tragedy of her childhood to be over. She returns to her hometown, the scene of the crime, and seeks out the journalist who covered the case so many years ago. If the police can’t give her justice and peace, she’ll find some for herself. But what really happened? And if the police weren’t able to solve the crime, can a seventeen-year-old girl do much better? Is the truth lost in time?
If you go all in, put your foot on the throttle and flip the pages a bit too fast until you reach the end, you will love this book. It is how I read, and I finished Before He Finds Her thinking it was nearly flawless. If you are a bit of a skeptic, however, as I am once I finish a book and begin thinking about it a bit more, mulling over it like I do a cup of coffee in the morning, Kardos asks a lot of us. There are several twists and turns here that make the book feel brilliantly plotted, but the plot itself may not be firmly rooted in reality.
With this book, Kardos proves himself here to stay, and I can’t wait to see what he does next. I hope he leaves some of the more unbelievable plot points out next time, as he has shown he can write a tense scene. I’d love to see what he does without the bells and whistles.
Before He Finds Her on Amazon.com/Powell’s.com/Indiebound.org
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