Cover Image: A Map of the Dark

A Map of the Dark

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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!

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“Her name’s Ruby Haverstock. She’s seventeen, almost eighteen, and her parents haven’t heard from her since Friday night. She went to her job at a local café, left work on time, and that was that.”
As the excerpt says this looks as an ordinary missing girl case for this new series featuring a female lead character, an FBI agent, Elsa Myers, but there are other complexities, other darkness indoors waiting to lurk its head out, other truths that wait and you feel the intensity at times of something coming and this keeps you reeled in and immersed in the tale. The fragility of this agent and her past brought before the reader in unfolding events and a series of flashbacks to her terrible mother daughter relationship. She is captive of the dark past within, a release somehow wanting, and with an ailing father with cancer needing attention she needs to focus on the discovery of the missing girl, battling with past and present some resilience to move in right direction in a map of discovery sought, a map of dark things may just come to fruition. Time is of essence, a sense of things slipping away from her, her own web of permeant reminders must be subdued, as the the chapters that mark the days mount, chances of the missing being alive shorten.
This is a psychological tale that has you intertwined in the discovery of Elsa’s troubled past and her dealing and coming to terms with that, with her competent outer but fragile inner self and then also the safety of the missing.
There are maybe one or two things in this story that do not feel plausible in reality.
The writing, easy flowing, visceral, and the psychology mystery has you reading on in some compelling and accessible thrill.

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A new series, the introduction of a new character, Elsa, an FBI agent who had a very difficult and abusive past, and is dealing with an impending sorrow in the present. Young women are going missing, and it is up to Elsa, and the young policemen who asked for her assistance, to find them.

So far, so good, Elsa is an interesting character, Lex her police counterpoint on this, grows on one and cements the deal by books end. For me though, the back story of Elsa quite overtook the case of the missing. It was an intriguing back story but nonetheless definitely overshadowed everything else going on, very lopsided. The case itself had a plot point that was so predictable one could see it coming from s mile away, cliche I know. What happens next in the case I just couldn't quite swallow as believable. There is also one coincidence of a personal nature that felt to me, contrived. So a mixed read, but an intriguing enough of a character that it may call me back to read book two, which I am suspecting will have less of the past and more of a case.

ARC from Netgalley.

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A solid addition to the genre with an likeable cast of characters. At times the amount of backstory seems to compete with the main plot, but it's all fast-paced enough to not be an issue, and further installments of the series will have more room to breathe and move forward because of it. Ellis is sure to hook many fans with this one.

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Special Agent Elsa Myers is trying to come to grips with the pending death of her father and facing several old bad memories. At the same time, she can't resist it when her supervisor calls her in for a case of a missing teenager. Ms. Ellis does a terrific job of character development including the of balancing Elsa as an emotionally scarred woman and an intuitive investigator. The story of the missing teenagers and a potential serial kidnapper provides a terrific framework to get to know Elsa as well as many other characters that hopefully are recurring in future installments of the series. The only thing that bugged me during the reading of the book the lack of dogs in the hunt. Ms. Ellis may have wanted to use the moment to highlight certain things but it seemed odd to have humans racing through a forest without the aid of the superior canine nose. Hopefully this is rectified in future stories. I'll be reading them!

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I'm not a fan of police procedurals and/or series thrillers in general as I find them formulaic, predictable and going for the cheap thrill. This novel transcended all of that. The main character is complex enough to carry the reader through a number of novels and I like the development of the secondary characters who are also fleshed and unique enough to carry a reader's interest beyond a single book.

The plot itself was not extraordinary, but it didn't have to be, because the author made me feel.

Thank you, Netgalley, for the e-review copy of this novel.

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Special Agent Elsa has a soft spot for 'reading' teenagers--especially in the midst of a crisis. When seventeen-year-old Ruby goes missing, she's immediately asked to work it, despite her terminally-ill father being in the hospital. She doesn't realize that this particular case will hit closer to home than she expects. While there are several holes in this story's plot, it's a fast read that will have you speed reading to see what happens to Ruby and his other victims.

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This was a fast mystery that was a bit predictable. I enjoyed Special Agent Elsa Myers and I look forward to seeing more from her. You could tell that a lot of this novel was about setting her up for future books, and that is fine, glad it is out of the way.

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I really enjoyed this story. it was just the right mix of everything and I look forward to reading more from the author and about the characters!

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Torn between her dying father and her job as an FBI agent, Elsa Myers makes the difficult decision to leave her father’s bedside to join forces with an NYPD detective to track a missing teen. Stumbling over a series of red herrings, Elsa begins to panic, knowing that with each passing hour, her chances of locating the missing girl alive grow slimmer. This book was so good on so many level, yes the kidnapping story was incredibly tense, but the storyline about Elsa’s battle to have control over every aspect of her life, even knowing she’s fighting a losing battle, was so real and so immediate. Fantastic read, highly recommended

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