Just Jennifer

Before He Finds Her by Michael Kardos (Mysterious Press, February 2015)

Melanie Denison has been living in the West Virginia trailer of her aunt and uncle for the past fifteen years, since the night her father Ramsey Miller killed her mother in the New Jersey shore town of Silver Bay; it was assumed that he meant to kill his daughter, then called Meg, who was rescued and swept off to live in the Witness Protection Program as Ramsey was never caught.  Melanie has never been allowed to do the things most children and teenagers do, including things as simple as school events and surfing the Internet.  As Melanie approaches her eighteenth birthday, she begins to year for things she considers to be “normal” and convinces her aunt and uncle to allow her to finish out her schooling at the public high school and then to attend the local community college.  In spite of, or perhaps due to, the sheltered life she has led, Melanie begins a relationship with a young teacher from the high school she graduated from, and becomes pregnant.  No longer wanting to live hidden in the shadows and not wanting her child to grow up the way she did, Melanie confides in Phillip and then sets out for Silver Bay to uncover the truth of what happened that night, almost daring her father to find her, not knowing the secrets that trouble her parents individually and as a couple, and not knowing the secrets she will be stirring up, but willing to take the chance if it means freedom for herself and her unborn child.

A tightly written plot, even as things unravel, that illustrates the closer someone is to a situation, the less clearly it can been seen and how easily people often take the word of someone they love at face value and how quickly all of that can fall apart.  Effectively told, the story of Ramsey Miller unfolds in two ways: from the stories told to Melanie, the truth she believes, and in flashbacks to the days leading up Allison Miller’s murder.  Pitch perfect writing, no detail overlooked or extraneous, make this not only a satisfying thriller, but a story of familial love, love of self and the families we create ourselves, and what happens when that love is used as a weapon of fear rather than an instrument of hope and encouragement.