No Woods as Dark as These: A Ryan DeMarco Mystery

In Silvis’s subpar fourth mystery featuring Pennsylvania state policeman turned PI Ryan DeMarco (after 2019’s A Long Way Down), Ryan and his PI girlfriend, Jayme Matson, who’s also former state police, help the police investigate a horrific triple murder in the woods. One victim was crucified on a tree, the other two burnt to a crisp. The revelation that they were a pimp and two prostitutes takes Ryan, Jayme, and the police detectives down some seedy paths. The case itself is intriguing, but there’s never any sense of why the police need to hire private detectives (or, actually, conscript them, as they can’t actually pay), nor why folks who’d left the force would volunteer to work a case for free. A ton of characters and subplots, including a police corruption case, slows the action. Long-winded prose doesn’t help (“There was no accounting for something like that, no predicting when or under what configuration of circumstances such a change would happen, but from then until now she had been his lighthouse and safe harbor”). Hopefully, Silvis will do better next time. Agent: Sandy Lu, L. Perkins Agency. (Aug.)