I haven’t been reading a ton of mysteries this year. My heart has been fully consumed with all the incredible romances, but I was craving something different for a quick switch-up. A casual browse led me to A Voice in the Dark by Barbara Nickless. I was hoping for a fast-paced, exciting procedural mystery, but what I got was something else entirely.
The Midnight Man, a nefarious serial killer terrorizing Denver, is back after five years, and FBI Agent Helen Belle is determined to catch him this time.
In the last case she worked with this killer involved, no one believed he even existed, instead placing all the blame on a teenager he manipulated. Now, she’s pulling out all the stops to not only prove his existence, but also make sure he can’t use his video game to reach any other vulnerable teenagers and convince them to commit heinous atrocities.
But The Midnight Man is smart, and with witnesses too traumatized to talk and an entire world of dark net demons lurking, Helen has her work cut out for her.
The protagonist in A Voice in the Dark is an FBI Agent, but she’s far from the most interesting one here. She feels like a vehicle for readers to explore the story. No single character, not even the villain, truly captured my attention. Certain people, like Benedict, Helen’s former love and colleague on the case, had potential, but their storylines felt rushed and not fully developed.
There is an important and interesting exploration of the psychological horrors teenagers face in the modern world at play here, but with no compelling character to truly anchor the message.
A Voice in the Dark is poorly written, which makes it fairly unpleasant to read. There is a lot of “I did this, then I did this, and then this happened.” There is a great deal of discussion of highways in a way that is only tangentially necessary to the plot, with a lot of lengthy explanation of the criminal process that also feels unnecessary.
Half an hour later, I arrive at the Denver field office on Eighty-Sixth Street, grab a breakfast burrito at the cafeteria before my stomach devours my esophagus, and then dump my coat and briefcase in the fourth-floor law library, where visiting agents often sit. While I’m eating, I make a quick call to Human Resources to confirm that Dr. Benedict Hoffman is still under contract as an expert witness with the FBI. Next I reach out to BAU Supervisory Special Agent Zane Samir, fill him in on the case, and inform him that Denver PD wants BAU’s involvement. We schedule a meeting for tomorrow at 6: 00 a.m. MST.
A solid third of this book is just superfluous and unnecessary details, and it muddies the subject matter and premise, a premise that could have been interesting if treated correctly.
I don’t know much about gaming, but even with my rudimentary knowledge, many of the details surrounding this evil game are implausible at best, if not completely ridiculous. I suspect most people under the age of forty would come to the same conclusion.
A Voice in the Dark could have been a great book, but the idea behind it was executed so poorly as to render it unreadable. I wanted to see where this book went, but it was very difficult to get through. There are so many better mysteries out there, and I lament that this is the one I stumbled upon.
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