Review of The Taken Ones

I tried Jess Lourey’s The Quarry Girls and was impressed, so I was excited to try her latest. The Taken Ones was quite different. What did I think? Check out my Review of The Taken Ones by Jess Lourey, which I put on my Best Mysteries of 2023 list!

Written and edited by Jen Ryland. Last updated on:

The Taken Ones by Jess Lourey

To be published on September 19 2023 by Thomas & Mercer.

I read this book in September 2023.

Thanks to the publisher for the advance review copy which I accepted under FTC guidelines! Please see my Editorial Policy for more details.

Plot Summary for The Taken Ones

Summer 1980: With no fear of a local superstition, three girls go into a Minnesota wood.

Only one comes out. Dead silent. Memory gone. No trace of her friends. The mystery of the Taken Ones captures the nation.

Summer 2022: Cold case detective Van Reed and forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck are assigned a disturbing homicide—a woman buried alive, clutching a heart charm necklace belonging to one of the vanished girls.

Van follows her gut. Harry trusts in facts. Their common ground is the need to catch a killer before he kills again. They have something else in common: each has ties to the original case in ways they’re reluctant to share.

As Van and Harry connect the crimes of the past and the present, Van struggles with memories of her own nightmarish childhood—and the fear that uncovering the truth of the Taken Ones will lead her down a path from which she, too, may never return.

What Else Has Jess Lourey Written?

Quite a lot! I’ll stick to the mysteries and thrillers:

Jess Lourey wrote a series of cozy rom com mysteries that feature small town librarian and reporter Mira James. These were published between 2006-2019. In 2020, she published Unspeakable Things, a 1980s serial killer mystery based on true events. She published both Litani (another 1980s thriller inspired by true crime) and Bloodline (yes, another tale inspired by a true story.) After that, she wrote The Quarry Girls, also inspired by real cases in the Midwest in the 1970s.

Review of The Taken Ones

The Quarry Girls is a subgenre that I’ve been meaning to do a post on, something I’d call victim-centered crime fiction. Lourey based the book on real true crime cases.

What Type of Book was The Taken Ones?

I was expecting The Taken Ones to be similar. But The Taken Ones was a classic police procedural, which made me very happy.

For some reason I find police procedurals soothing in the same way as other people find watching Marie Kondo sort socks soothing: I love watching someone make order out of chaos.

Evangeline “Van” Reed is a cold case investigator (and former Minneapolis police officer) who works for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). She’s called in by the Minneapolis police department to help on a new case that seems to have a connection to a very strange unsolved 1980s case of two missing young girls.

What Made The Taken Ones Stand Out?

It’s long been a trend in police procedurals to have main characters with “demons” and personal issues. Often it’s substance abuse (typically alcoholism) and/or trauma from a past case or the violent death of a work partner.

But Van’s background is really unusual, and (I think) added a lot to her work process. She also seems to be somewhat psychic (not unlike the character in Night Will Find You.)

Van has two detectives assisting her: Kyle, a young, Black BCA agent who was adopted by a white family and grew up in small-town Minnesota, and Harry, a quirky forensic scientist.

It’s also a trend in police procedurals to have inter-agency rivalries and to have the main character have to work with a former enemy. Both of these tropes were in play, and I’m all for it.

Jess Lourey is a talented writer who juggled all these aspects: the past/present cases, the investigators and their personal lives, the (many) suspects, and the perpetrator’s POV. It all flowed smoothly, the pacing was great, and I found the book VERY hard to put down.

What Was the Surprise at the End of The Taken Ones?

I didn’t realize this was going to be a series until I got to that very interesting reveal at the end. So I will be eagerly awaiting the next installment!

Do you love police procedurals? What are some of your favorite series? Tell me in the comments!

And if/when you read this I need to talk to you about it!!! Leave a comment.