A
Complex Mystery That Keeps You Guessing
Very late in Donan Berg's exciting crime mystery Into the Dark, a
line metaphorically serves as emblematic of our protagonist's quest for what
often appears to be the murkiest of truths: "His weakened flashlight
batteries strained to illuminate the unknown."
From the exciting opening, Donan Berg's Into the Dark relentlessly builds a thrilling mystery centering around election tampering, a stack of money, a counterfeiting operation, and a dead body. In order to reveal the truth, Sheriff Jonas McHugh finds himself compulsively returning to a rustic cabin with hidden compartments and trap doors and to a cave that is the source of more than its share of secrets and disturbing activity. As Jonas simultaneously investigates the money and counterfeiting issues, the election fraud angle, and the death of operative Ed Telling, the reader follows along; plot threads first complicate and then eventually align to great satisfaction.
Methodically and doggedly, Jonas edges toward insight. "Bonnie's statement of the obvious unleashed within Jonas a mental lightning bolt to illuminate what had been dark." A novel smartly riddled with Biblical quotes and allusions, Into the Dark follows Jonas's journey toward enlightenment, one that paradoxically will send him into a fair share of hellish, subterranean places.
At the heart of the mystery is the beautiful, mercurial Kayla, for whom Jonas
possesses contrary feelings of attraction and mistrust. Her presence and
Iowa's political environment's home of high-stake caucuses inform the
novel with layers of compromised motivations and machinations.
Throughout Berg
peppers the story with terse phrasing that echoes Jonas's mindset: "Telling's killer is still free. Bogus bills infest Silver County wallets.
Unfed, unclothed teens flood rural roads."
Berg's skillful sorting out Jonas's complicated thoughts as he reaches
disturbing conclusions makes Into the Dark a smart, engaging novel.
Michael Hartnett, author of The Blue Rat.
