The Devil You Know
A Novel
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3.7 • 14 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In the vein of Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects and Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, The Devil You Know is a thrilling debut novel about a rookie reporter whose memories of the murder of her childhood best friend bring danger—and a stalker—right to her doorstep
The year is 1993. Rookie reporter Evie Jones is working the crime beat in a city terrified by a serial rapist and a growing number of missing and murdered young girls. As she covers this story, Evie is haunted by the unsolved murder eleven years earlier of her own best friend, Lianne Gagnon. The suspected killer, a repeat offender named Robert Cameron, was never apprehended, turning Lianne’s case cold.
Now twenty-one and living alone for the first time, Evie becomes driven to find out what really happened to Lianne. But every clue she uncovers seems to lead to an unimaginable conclusion. As she gets closer and closer to the truth, Evie is convinced that the killer is still at large—and that he’s coming back for her . . .
Critically acclaimed author Elisabeth de Mariaffi delivers a spine-tingling story about secrets long buried and an obsession that cannot be controlled.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Blending fiction and true-crime details about the case of serial killer Paul Bernardo, Elisabeth de Mariaffi’s taut novel lives and breathes in the shadows. The author immerses us in early-‘90s Toronto—a city terrorized for years by the savage murders of schoolgirls. Our narrator, rookie beat reporter Evie Jones, navigates those horrors alongside her own decade-old struggle with the unsolved murder of a childhood friend. De Mariaffi draws us deeper and deeper into her heroine's quest for closure under threat of real and imagined fears. Avoiding the exploitation of actual tragedy, the debut novelist constructs a chilling, sinister glimpse into Toronto's past.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in and around Toronto in 1993, Canadian author de Mariaffi's artful first novel chronicles the efforts of journalist Evie Jones to track down the man who murdered a friend of hers, 11-year-old Lianne Gagnon, in 1982. Robert Nelson Cameron was identified as a suspect but never caught. Jones researches the killer through old newspaper articles using the nascent Internet, aided by her cautiously flirtatious friend, David Patton. Since Lianne's death, Evie has suffered from some form of post-traumatic stress; the man she often sees at her apartment window could be real or the product of an overheated imagination. When Evie points out to her mother, Annie, that women read more true crime than men, Annie replies the reason is not entertainment but survival: "It's so we learn how to get away." Hooked readers will silently implore Evie to refrain from entering a basement or a cabin in the woods in pursuit of a story and a killer.
Customer Reviews
Okay
A little long at times.