The Unknown Beloved by Amy Harmon
Chicago, 1923: Ten-year-old Dani Flanagan returns home to find police swarming the house, her parents dead. Michael Malone, the young patrolman assigned to the case, discovers there’s more to the situation - and to Dani Flanagan herself - than the authorities care to explore. Malone is told to shut his mouth, and Dani is sent away to live with her spinster aunts in Cleveland.
Fifteen years later, Michael Malone is summoned to Cleveland to investigate a series of murders that have everyone stumped, including his friend and famed Prohibition agent Eliot Ness, now Cleveland’s director of safety. There, in a city caught in the grip of a serial killer, Malone’s and Dani’s paths cross once again.
Malone is drawn to Dani and her affinity for the dead and compassion for the destitute. It doesn’t take long for him to realize that she could help him solve his case. As terror descends on the city and Malone and Dani confront the dark secrets that draw them together, it’s a race to find the killer or risk becoming his next victims.
Review: In 1923 Chicago, ten-year-old Dani Flanagan's returns home to find her parents murdered. Only Michael Malone, a young patrolman working the case believes there is more to the story than meets the eye. Fifteen years later, Michael is summoned to Cleveland to investigate a serial killer that is terrorizing the city. Once again, his path crosses with Dani, who is now a beautiful young woman who also has a unique ability that gives her an affinity for the dead. As the two are drawn together, Michael realizes that she could also help him solve the case.
I really admire the range Amy Harmon has an author. Every book she writes is so different and she can write successfully across so many different genres. This book is historical fiction like others she has written but is crime fiction as well. While Dani is a fictional character, Harmon loosely based this novel on the Cleaveland Torso Murders of the 1930s and Michael Malone was a real person who worked the case. While there are some gruesome details about the bodies and individual murders in this book, I thought it was handled well and I liked the suspense and tension that the murder on the loose added to the story.
The relationship between Dani and Michael did feel a little ick to me. I just didn't like that he had known her as a ten-year-old little girl. I know later in the book they are both consenting adult, but it just felt weird to me that he goes from giving her his daughter's stuffed animal to giving her passionate kisses. I also am not convinced that backstory was necessary to the story. If that whole early part of the novel were omitted, the two could still meet later as adults and bond naturally over shared circumstances and the murderer. Second, the mystery behind what truly happened to Dani's parents was never solved so it was unclear why they had to be included.
Also, I know it was just an oversight, but the two main characters had a conversation back and forth making an analogy that something was like plastic. Plastic was not widely produced until the 1960s and 70s so the two would absolutely not have used that term - maybe melamine or bakelite but not plastic. The rest of the book felt very appropriate and well suited to the 1930s setting, but I had a hard time letting the plastic thing go, I must admit.
Stars: 3
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