What an interesting twisted story. This story is a weave of both the teenager that is missing and Elsa's past that she is still coming to grips with. We follow Elsa as she is with he dying father and pulled into a new case of a teenager missing. She gets pulled back and forth between her father, past and the missing teen. The story grips you and takes you places that you hope don't ever happen in your life. I also think Lex will be a big help to her in the long run.



*I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.*

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of A MAP OF THE DARK by Karen Ellis (pen name of Katia Lief) in exchange for my honest review.***

FBI agent Elsa and new guy Lex are on the case of a missing teen. Elsewhere, Elsa’s father is dying of cancer and she struggles with issues from her childhood.

Meh. I had a hard time connecting to Elsa. I know I was supposed to empathize with her mental illness and her abusive mother, but I just felt those were added to give Elsa some depth. Her mother’s murder, part of Elsa’s backstory, I *think* was supposed to be a twist, but I guessed early on. The kidnapping case never gave me a thriller vibe, perhaps because so many of the characters lacked dimension.

I have the ARC for the next in the series and will read it hoping for a better experience.

I gave this book 4 stars, but sitting here typing, I remember next to nothing about it. There's a missing girl, a driven female detective with a dark past, and a race against time for her to find someone close to her before the criminal she's tracking can strike again. It was a quite enjoyable thriller while I was reading it, but there's nothing unique enough for my memory to hang on to. If you're in the mood for some crime/suspense, this is perfectly serviceable, but not much else.

Though I liked the book, I made the decision at the time I finished not to review it on my site. Maybe in the future I will include it in a book list post or another article.

It is a well-written mystery thriller with a complex main character. And with that, I find it hard to fully connect with Elsa yet at the same time I still find her deeply interesting. It’s evident that she’s flawed and unstable and there have been hints that she had a rough childhood. That she’s hiding this terribly dark secret that’s been unconsciously haunting her. But it wasn’t revealed until the last part and with that coming to light, Elsa’s demeanor became understandable and even tolerable. The mystery behind the teenage girls’ disappearance interspersed with Elsa’s childhood had me transfixed. But I feel like there’s not enough background story about the killer. I wanted to know more details of what really pushed him to do the crimes and how he does it. And although the twist is predictable, there are still some elements that come off as surprising. The ending is also pretty solid. This is a good start for a series and I enjoyed it enough that I wouldn’t mind reading the next book and see how Elsa’s character will develop.

An eerie crime novel that kept me on the edge of my seat. I mainly was intrigued by this novel from the cover then when I read the synopsis I was hooked, line, and sinker. It does start of a little slow but once you power through it's totally worth the wait.

The book is not bad; it's just that this is more about Elsa, the detective, than the actual missing girl. In fact, the missing girl is an excuse to write about Elsa.

I do like detective plots and I am used to authors mixing the actual plot with parts of the life of the detective in charge to solve the case (which I usually don't care to read). In this case, I really couldn't care less for Elsa and her dying father. I just didn't feel any connection with the characters here.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this title.

A Map of the Dark is the first in an interesting new series from Karen Ellis that introduces us to Elsa Myers, an FBI agent struggling with her own inner demons. While this is a novel far more about the protagonist than it is the crime she and her colleagues are investigating, I enjoyed the novel, and I think the series has promise.

Myers is an interesting character, an FBI agent grappling with the deep emotional and physical scars of a childhood of abuse. Unusually, however, the abuser in her life was her mother. I found this an interesting, atypical approach to the subject — so often, thrillers are about male abusers (true, men dominate that abominable segment of the population). Ellis does a great job of showing a different kind of abuser, and how Myers’s relationship with her mother has influenced her work and relationships with others. In addition, she is navigating the rapid decline of her father, who was aware of the abuse but somewhat unable (or perhaps unwilling) to fully protect his daughters from his wife’s rages. We learn the full story of Elsa and her mother through a series of flashbacks. Myers has been ‘managing’ her issues through self-harm, which adds another interesting element to her character, and Ellis does a great job of weaving that into the story, and handles the issue deftly and lightly.

The primary weakness of the novel, in my opinion, is that the two main threads of the story — that of the investigation revolving around the missing girls, and also Myers’s past traumas — aren’t woven together as well as they could have been. Both are quite interesting and well-written, however I think that Elsa’s background dominated the story in a way that didn’t really feel relevant to the main plot.

A Map of the Dark feels, in many ways, like the first episode in a new crime TV series: we’re primarily there to be introduced to the characters, and the investigation is just part of the background, a vehicle through which we are supposed to get to know the protagonist(s). I think I would have preferred a bit more on the investigation, which on occasion seemed to lurch or jump forward in a slightly artificial way.

Many crime/thriller fans may find the lack of investigative detail surprising — not that every FBI novel has to be a procedural, but I found the story lighter on the investigation than I would have expected and preferred. As a result of this imbalance, the tension was a little lacking, and I never got that feeling of foreboding that a great thriller can elicit. I did, however, appreciate that Ellis didn’t spend time in the killer’s head — so often, serial killer novels are grossly overindulgent, revelling in the twisted fantasies and/or psychoses inside the antagonist’s head. (The TV series Criminal Minds is particularly guilty of this.)

I think the series has a lot of promise: Myers has the potential to be a really interesting, engaging protagonist. Ellis does a very good job of laying some of the foundations for the series in this novel. With Myers’s character pretty well established in this first book, I’m eager to read where the series goes next.

So, a cautious recommendation. A Map of the Dark should appeal to fans of many different crime and thriller series. It is out now, published by Mulholland Books in the US and UK.

As a child, FBI agent Elsa Myers was abused by her mother. To deal with this she became a cutter, her skin a map work of her pain. Now years later her father is dying, and she is confused and conflicted. Why did he not save her from her mother?

No surprise then, that her career trajectory has her on a rapid response team for child abduction. Her insight is keen, her results are real.

A request for help from NYPD detective Lex Cole, leads to more than she thought possible, as layer upon layer of her past becomes both obstacle and advantage.

Karen Ellis is the pseudonym of author Katia Lief who has several books to her credit. A Map of the Dark is the first book in The Searchers series. First posted at: MurderInCommon.com

in terms of suspense/thriller literature, this will be a new series I am certain many of that kind of reader will enjoy.

Take a standard issue kidnapping thriller and graft on something darker. The result is interesting and imperfect, a crime novel with more staying power than it might have had otherwise, but one that never quite transcends the format.

Self-harm is notoriously tricky to capture in print, but Ellis (a pseudonym for established crime author Katia Lief) nails the hardest part: bringing the reader to a place where we can understand the impulse. Getting us there means we have to witness the worst of the world, the torrent of abuse it takes to fundamentally alter someone's relationship with pain. The book is aptly titled, clearly. Ellis also does an admirable job of extrapolating that impulse into something more universal, a need to inflict pain that is just as easily directed outwards, which gives our protagonist something of an inside view into those she pursues. Sure, this is the same Psych 101 stuff we've seen in thousands of procedurals, wherein abuse leads to abuse, ad nauseam, ad infinitum, but Ellis writes with enough feeling and insight to keep the psychological developments feeling fresh even as we more or less know where they'll end up.

And therein lies the book's biggest weakness, perhaps: the plot does pretty much what you'd expect. Even as the writing keeps you reading, happily plunging forward through familiar procedural territory, the plot lacks the satisfaction of any true surprises. Semi-spoiler but not really: when a character of roughly the same age as the missing girls is introduced as a relative of the investigator, you just <em>know</em> things are about to get personal. Similarly, the sporadic flashbacks culminate in the horrific but expected culmination you've seen coming since page 10.

And yet... it's still a solid read and an effective procedural, with the potential for a strong series to come. The characters live and breathe beyond the page. The writing is strong throughout, with the occasional hallucinatory flourish and a subtle hand with the psychological bits. And if you're into that sort of thing, yes, the book is surprisingly dark, though it never crosses the line into gratuitous territory. Recommended overall.

Stop with the multiple POVs! They really don't add anything to the story.

The missing child case that introduces us to Elsa Myers isn't anything new to people who read these types of mysteries, so the "new" needs to be FBI Agent Myers, right? Who she is, what drives her, etc. are all the things that will keep readers coming back. And yes, there's a deep dark secret (revealed at the end of the book) that drives Elsa and colors her life. The bigger question is, now that we know, will Elsa grow past it? Because the mystery of the missing child isn't going to be quite enough in this world of SVU and Criminal Minds.

ARC provided by publisher.

Special Agent Elsa Myers is in demand in the FBI's Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team. But she is also needed by her family as her father is on his death bed. But aside from her father and sister, work is all she has. So when a seventeen-year-old girl doesn't come home from work at a New York City coffee shop, Special Agent Myers leaves her father's bedside to consult-just a consult, she'll be back that evening--with NYPD Det. Lex Cole. But when the case turns personal, Elsa knows she'll see it through.
As Elsa investigates the missing girl and deals with her father's terminal illness, her past comes back to haunt her. Her father begs her to let go, to allow his death, the sale of her childhood home, to free her. But it isn't always easy, especially when Det. Cole is there, trying to be her new best friend when what she wants is a partner that minds his own business.
A MAP OF THE DARK is a police procedural that uniquely has the FBI working in cooperation with local law enforcement, a welcome change. Also refreshing is the altruistic work of law enforcement. They want to rescue the missing victim; no one-upping, no competition, no corruption. It is an efficiently written combination of plot and character that will hold the interest of crime fiction fans.

A Map of the Dark's story line was similar to Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects. Rather than a reporter who likes to cut herself A Map of the Dark has a detective who is a cutter. They both have troubled pasts and are trying to find missing girls. With a story line that was so similar the only thing that saved this book for me was the back story and family life of FBI Agent Elsa Myers. A Map of the Dark moves between Elsa's life and the missing girls. At times it would take a few sentences into the new chapter before I could decide if it was about Elsa's terrible back story or a missing girl.

The relationship between Elsa Myers and Detective Lex Cole reminded me a lot of the tv show In Plain Site. Did anyone else watch that show? I loved it! I couldn't help but picture Mary Shannon and Marshal Mann's characters as I read this book. I liked Elsa and Lex's characters enough to read the next book in this series (The Searchers) when it's released.

Elsa is a special agent who is known for her skills finding missing children. During a time when Elsa should be on leave to watch over her dying father she instead decides to take on a missing child case to help her focus on anything but her terrible childhood and her mixed feelings for the man who could have saved her and prevented her mother's abuse but didn't.

"What would her life have been like if this many people had swarmed to the house in Ozone Park in search of her, only to find her huddled in a locked closet? She imagines the relief, the celebration, but wonders if outsiders could really comprehend how lost a child can be inside her own house. At some point you're beyond saving; no one can show you how to unswallow all that darkness."

Elsa has been requested by Detective Lex Cole to help her on his case of a girl who went missing. Here's where things got complicated for me. There ends up being two missing girls. Lex and Elsa don't know that right away and the author throws the second girl's story in before the reader knows there is a second girl. This was confusing for me. I had a hard time deciding which girl was which once I realized there were two. Maybe that was the whole idea. It didn't really matter what their back story was. They were girls who were taken by a psychopath that Elsa and Lex were racing to find before it was too late.

Elsa family life is messy and complicated and that is tossed into the middle of the suspense of whether or not they will find the girls before it's too late.

Spoiler!! I repeat spoiler! If you are going to read this book, don't go any further! Just know that it's a good book and if you are looking for a suspense novel with an interesting female lead A Map of the Dark is a good choice.



I really need to talk about the ending. It's not very often that I've read a suspense novel that the female lead slits the throat of the killer. I know that Elsa is a cutter, so she is comfortable with a knife, but I did not see that coming. For some reason it seemed so much more graphic than her shooting him. It was a twist I didn't anticipate and it made this book even better. I guess I feel that way because it broke the mold that these novels tend to be in.

Also, I did not see coming that the "home invasion" that ended with Elsa's mother dying wasn't an invasion at all. I thought is was odd that Elsa kept going back to her childhood home that her father had sold and breaking in just to wander around. It was actually starting to annoy me. I however was not expecting that Elsa was looking for the murder weapon that her father had hid from the police.

Overall, A Map of the Dark is a good read. The main characters really grew on me and I liked the few twists that I didn't anticipate.

A Map of the Dark is a strong start to a new series. It starts as just a missing girl case that soon turns into something more serious. That path the case takes FBI Agent Elsa Myers is a complicated one as she has her own dark struggles and past she must cope with. The plot is multi-layered and unpredictable. I look forward to book 2. Highly recommended to readers who enjoy Tana French or Gillian Flynn.

Elsa is an interesting main character. She has a damaged past and is continually struggling in her present life because of past events. I did really enjoy the partnership between Elsa and Lex. I just wish there would have been more scenes with the killer and seeing the thought process of why things were being done.

This novel is a promising start to a new series. Ellis digs deeper than most with this psychological tale and the rewards are vast. Elsa Myers manages to separate herself from a long line of female FBI agents and will hopefully be leading readers on complex journeys for a very long time to come.

A Map of the dark by Karen Ellis

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Ruby Haverstock, a 17-year-old girl has been abducted at the end of her shift working in a Café on Friday evening. Detective Lex Cole, a new to the department Detective who’s just spent three years undercover with Vice is assigned to the case. It is his first child abduction case and he requests the help of FBI Agent Elsa Meyers as she has great track record in finding missing people. Agent Elsa, despite being on the bedside of her terminally ill father accepts the case. The duo starts by interviewing the friends and family of the abducted teenager. As the case progresses, they find a pattern and they realize it is linked to several child abductions that happened through the last few years. When Elsa’s niece Mel gets abducted, the case gets personal and it is upto Lex and Elsa to bring them all back.

The plot has multiple layers to it. There is the child abduction part and then we learn about Elsa’s present and past life. Though the description of the book makes it look like it is all about the child abduction case, its not. The main case was not compelling at all. First half of the book is filled with interviews of several of Ruby’s friends, ex-boyfriends, family and there is little to no progress. To me, the teenage characters depicted in the story didn’t seem real at all. I would say their characters were conveniently created as most of the case breakthroughs came from withheld information. Though the case evolves in the second half, there were no major twists and turns in the case and it was fairly predictable.

It is the other part of the story ( the one about Elsa ) that kept me reading. Set against the backdrop of the abduction case is the story of Elsa’s father, Roy, who has recently been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Elsa’s younger sister Tara and her teenage niece Mel are also dealing with this heartbreak. Elsa Mayers is a complicated character who is still haunted by the demons of her past. Initially the dynamics between Elsa and her partner Lex Cole seems rough as Elsa tries to take control and cuts down any advances from his side in getting to know her. As the case progresses, both of them become great partners and also friends. Interspersed with the main case are the excerpts from Elsa’s troubled childhood, where she is abused by her mother. Now sitting alongside her dying father, Elsa struggles to get answers for the questions of her past.
A Map of the Dark is not all about abduction case. The book is character driven with Elsa’s character and her past playing a large part in the story. Karen Ellis is a talented writer and she somehow links both aspects of the book together to give a satisfying read.



Thanks to Mulholand books and Netgalley for ARC

Verdict: A Map of the Dark is a compelling read that combines police procedural and psychological thriller but not on right proportions.
3.5/ 5 Stars

I was lost in the dark shadowy barren coulee with one of my Traveling Sisters reading The Map of the Dark trying to find cover from the demons haunting our main character FBI Agent Elsa Myers.

Map of the Dark is a police procedural with a strong well-drawn character here with Elsa who really stood out for us. Karen Ellis does a good job creating an interesting and complex character with Elsa Myers. We settled in with our books and soon were taken on a race against time with Elsa as she hunts for a missing girl. Her dark past secrets start to surface and we had our guard up for those demons that were lurking in the shadow as Elsa begins to wrestle with them. We were intrigued and wanted to know more about her past however her past began to overshadow the case for us. The race slowed down and the case became a bit too predictable. However, for me, the revelation, in the end, left me shocked and clinched this one as a winner for me.

We loved the dynamics between intense, flawed Elsa and her cool easy going partner Lex. We enjoyed their growing friendship and loved the kindness and understanding Lex offered Elsa leaving us wanting more from Lex. We look forward to book two focusing on him.

Thank you, to NetGalley, Mulholland Books and Karen Ellis for a copy to read and review.

Traveling Sisters Review also can be found on our sister blog:
https://twogirlslostinacouleereading.wordpress.com

Summary from Goodreads:

"FBI Agent Elsa Myers finds missing people.
She knows how it feels to be lost...

Though her father lies dying in a hospital north of New York City, Elsa cannot refuse a call for help. A teenage girl has gone missing from Forest Hills, Queens, and during the critical first hours of the case, a series of false leads hides the fact that she did not go willingly.

With each passing hour, as the hunt for Ruby deepens into a search for a man who may have been killing for years, the case starts to get underneath Elsa's skin. Everything she has buried - her fraught relationship with her sister and niece, her self-destructive past, her mother's death - threatens to resurface, with devastating consequences.

In order to save the missing girl, she may have to lose herself...and return to the darkness she's been hiding from for years."

My Thoughts:

I absolutely love when I find a new mystery series to follow and enjoy! I am such a sucker for a good mystery so as soon as I found about this book I just knew that I had to read it. It was just as good as I had hoped it would be after reading that description. One of the things that I just can never seem to get enough of are books where the main characters have dark pasts that they need to overcome. This book pulled me into it from the very beginning. Elsa is joining in on the hunt for a missing girl while she is also trying to deal with the fact that her father is dying. She is struggling with memories from her childhood alongside of all of this. All of this was enough to really suck me into this story! I just couldn't stop reading. I found that Elsa had a few similarities to the main character in Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects in the way that she dealt with things that happened to her in her childhood (and whose name completely escapes me). In both cases, it really set a darker tone to the books than I had previously expected. I really enjoy darker mysteries so this was just one of the reasons why I enjoyed this book so much! I also really enjoyed the way that this author ended this book even though I found that not all of it was a surprise to me. There were things that I may have saw coming but it didn't matter because by then I was so invested on seeing how everything would turn out.

Overall, I found this to be a thrilling mystery that I just didn't want to set down. I sometimes feel like I read slower on my Kindle (not sure why or if that is really even true) but that certainly wasn't the case with this book. I just didn't want to stop reading! I liked that I was so pulled into the mystery portion of this book, but really it was the characters that I came to care about. That's why I'm so excited that this is just the first book in a planned series because I loved the characters and want more! I will certainly be waiting impatiently to get my hands on book two! I'm really glad that I didn't wait too long to read this book because this is an author to watch in my opinion. Highly recommended!

Bottom Line: A solid beginning to this new series! I need more!

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book thanks to the publisher and NetGalley.

This book was published on January 2nd 2018 if you are interested!