Publishers Weekly - 27.01.2020

M

eg Gardiner still vividly

remembers when her quiet

Santa Barbara, Calif., neigh-

borhood was disrupted by

extreme violence. “Between 1979 and

1981,” she says, “one couple was assaulted

and two more were murdered in their

homes, virtually around the corner from

my family’s house.”

Gardiner recalls the aftermath of these

events and how deeply

they affected her com-

munity and its sense of

security. The murders

went unsolved until 2018,

when authorities

arrested a suspect in the

slayings, which had pre-

viously been linked to

the notorious Golden

State Killer. “Those of us

who grew up in the area

were shocked and

chilled,” she says. “Our

neighborhood had been

a predator’s hunting

ground. The killer almost

certainly prowled past

my house while choos-

ing his targets and must have run along

our street to escape after his second

deadly attack. The case has cast deep

shadows across my memories.”

But Gardiner channels those memo-

ries into her novels—three series, three

standalones, and counting—about female

detectives in pursuit of serial murderers.

Gardiner’s latest, The Dark Corners of the

Night, is the third book in her UNSUB

series about FBI agent Caitlin Hendrix.

The first two installments—UNSUB and

Into the Black Nowhere—were loosely

based on the Zodiac Killer and Ted Bundy,

respectively. The Dark Corners of the

Night is inspired by the crimes of Richard

Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker: a mysteri-

ous killer known as the Midnight Man is

breaking into Los Angeles homes, slaying

parents, and leaving their children alive as

tiny witnesses.

Though Gardiner’s books are fiction,

she says achieving a certain level of veri-

similitude is vital to her work. To that end,

she watches documentaries, reads rele-

vant books and histories, and consults

archival materials,

including police and FBI

reports. She has also

attended FBI seminars

and gone on police ride-

alongs. “I want to under-

stand these killers’ psy-

chology, motives, and

behavior,” Gardiner says.

“And I need to know how

the authorities grapple

with these cases. I am

inspired by the women

of the FBI and local law

enforcement who shoul-

der the burden of inves-

tigating violent crime.

They step up to stop the

worst of the worst.” The

same could be said of Caitlin Hendrix in

The Dark Corners of the Night.

A behavioral analyst for the FBI,

Hendrix is among Gardiner’s favorite char-

acters. “Caitlin is close to my heart,” she

says. “She’s a guardian—and a hunter. Her

job is tough, but she’s a cop’s daughter

and has inherited a sense of duty to pro-

tect others.”

And while a fascination with the dark-

est corners of human nature might seem

unusual, Gardiner says true crime books

are extremely popular for good reason.

“It’s an electric mix of curiosity and fear,”

she says. “Serial killers transgress all

boundaries, legal and moral. But they

present a facade of normality: They blend

in. They have jobs. They host barbecues.

They’re savage, yet average. This discon-

nect both rivets and frightens us. We want

to know that these killers can be defeated,

that we can rip off their masks, see them

as they really are, and stop them.”

In creating characters who do just

that, Gardiner herself sounds a bit like a

detective. “I brainstorm, research, outline,

come up with 12 story lines, and tear my

hair out trying to narrow them down to

one,” she says. “I find myself surrounded

by printouts and sticky notes and grocery

lists on which I scribbled seemingly bril-

liant insights that now look illegible. I

stagger from my desk, stumble outside,

shrink from the glare of the sun, careen

back inside, and sit down to revise the

heaping pile of words.”

Gardiner is currently writing the fourth

book in the UNSUB series, and there’s a

television series based on the books in the

works. But, like any good detective in the

middle of an investigation, she isn’t able to

disclose much yet. “That’s all I’m going to

reveal,” she says, “because keeping read-

ers in suspense is the essence of my job.”

Spotlight on

Meg Gardiner

WRITING IN THE DARK:

The bestselling author and Edgar Award winner draws

inspiration from true crime for her novels about female

detectives hot on the heels of serial killers

We want to know

that these killers can

be defeated, that we

can rip off their

masks, see them

as they really are,

and stop them.

— Meg Gardiner

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