And There He Kept Her.

Here’s the premise: two teens, a boy and a girl, break into Emmett Burr’s house in search of opiates. The house is remote, set on Sandy Lake in northern Minnesota, and the kids just assume that Emmett, old and immensely obese, will be passed out. But everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. Emmett shoots and kills the boy, while the girl, Jenny, is chained and left in a cell in the basement. It’s clear that she’s just the latest in a series of girls who’ve been locked up, abused, and eventually murdered. Fortunately, Jenny’s mother is quick to notice that her daughter is missing; she calls Sheriff’s Deputy Ben Packard, and the search is on. Ben, who recently moved from Minneapolis, spent his childhood summers on the lake; in fact, he’s related to Jenny. Packard’s search takes him to the dark underbelly of Sandy Lake, where alcoholism and drug abuse and violence and crime rule. Low-key Packard, who has his own secrets—he’s gay and just inching out of the closet—is as compelling and potentially as complex a cop as Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache. This is a remarkable debut—sharp, suspenseful, and emotionally powerful—sure to appeal to readers of Karin Slaughter and Lisa Gardner.