Dark Corners

True crime podcaster Rachel Krall, heroine of the acclaimed thriller The Night Swim, is back in action and caught in the crosshairs of danger again! Author Megan Goldin excels at misdirection and crafting intricate plots. But those aren’t the only tricks up her sleeve. Multiple points of view, a steaming hot FBI agent, and an in-depth take on the complicated, cutthroat world of influencers kept me flipping the pages of her new novel Dark Corners in a frenzy.

In this latest outing, Rachel Krall’s story starts when the FBI invites her into a maximum-security prison to meet with suspected serial killer Terence Bailey. The catch? Bailey is about to be released, since police can’t directly link him to the murders. And the last woman to visit him, a popular social media influencer, has vanished. Even worse—Bailey now seems to be targeting Rachel. It would be enough to make most of us flee town. But Rachel rushes toward danger, not away from it. She dives headlong into an investigation of the murdered and missing women, peeling back the layers of old and new crimes, frantically working to find answers before the killer finds her.

Rachel Krall seems like a character who is here to stay. That’s good news for those of us who can’t wait to see what kind of danger this compelling and determined woman rushes toward next. And I suspect our numbers will grow with Dark Corners.

Terence Bailey is about to be released from prison for breaking and entering, though investigators have long suspected him in the murders of six women. As his release date approaches, Bailey gets a surprise visit from Maddison Logan, a hot, young influencer with a huge social media following. Hours later, Maddison disappears, and police suspect she’s been kidnapped—or worse. Is Maddison’s disappearance connected to her visit to Bailey? And why was she visiting him in the first place?

When they hit a wall in the investigation, the FBI reluctantly asks for Rachel Krall’s help in finding the missing influencer. Maddison seems to only exist on social media; she has no family, no friends, and other than in her posts, most people have never seen her. Who is she, really? Using a fake Instagram account, Rachel goes undercover to BuzzCon, a popular influencer conference, where she discovers a world of fierce rivalry that may have turned lethal.

When police find the body of a woman with a tattoo of a snake eating its tail—identical to a tattoo Rachel had seen on Bailey’s hand—the FBI must consider a chilling possibility: Bailey has an accomplice on the outside and a dangerous obsession with influencers, including Rachel Krall herself. Suddenly the target of a monster hiding in plain sight, Rachel is forced to confront the very real dangers that lurk in the dark corners of the internet.