Killers Amidst Killers: Hunting Serial Killers Operating Under the Cloak of America’s Opioid Epidemic

Jensen (Chase Darkness with Me: How One True-Crime Writer Started Solving Murders) asks a lot of questions but gets few answers in this thought-provoking and disturbing examination of how serial killers could have operated unsuspected in areas of Ohio ravaged by the opioid epidemic during the 2010s. Factors include poor record keeping, unshared information (so that the m.o. of a murder in one county might remain unknown to investigators in a neighboring county), and lack of public concern about the lives of the victims, who were typically impoverished, abused, and addicted sex workers. Jensen gives the victims a vital presence through the voices of the loved ones they left behind. In particular, he focuses on the heartbreaking stories of two Columbus sex workers, best friends Danielle Greene and Lindsey Maccabee, whose bodies were found within a month of each other in 2017. As he seeks to identify the women’s killer or killers, he lays bare the devastation wrought by a system that delivers unequal justice for people deemed marginal by American society. Jensen also discusses the sad cases of 30 other women who either went missing or were murdered. Not just true crime buffs will want to check out this impassioned cri de coeur. Agent: Anthony Mattero, CAA. (July)