The Unknown Beloved by Amy Harmon

  

 My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Romance
Content: Strong language; Sex that is not described in detail, Gruesome killings

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.

 

I rarely read straight up historical fiction. I usually need some mystery or romance added in and this book had both of those things, plus it's Amy Harmon so how could I go wrong? Well, to start off I'm going to say that I have never read any of Amy Harmon's historical fiction novels. I've read quite a few  of her fantasy and romance ones and loved them. This book had a different feel to it from those books, but that wasn't completely unexpected since it's a different genre. 

I think this book is darker than her other books. It's based on a true crime that Eliot Ness was involved in trying to solve, that involved a serial killer that did gruesome killings, so I think that made the book feel even more different than I was expecting. I've read books with gruesome killings before and I don't particularly enjoy them, but this one was pretty mild in the descriptions compared to those. We never get into the head of the killer or have anything described as it's happening, just what's left to be found later. To me that was a good thing. 

The investigation was at times interesting, and at times too long and drawn out. I'm always cautious about reading something fictional about someone that was real, but I thought the real people were blended into the story well. The story is very character driven and I like character driven stories. Dani and Malone were both interesting characters and I liked that we were able to slowly peel the layers off of who they were. Their relationship was sweet and slow burn, but at times I found it frustrating because Malone didn't want to involve Dani in his life. 

Mostly what I didn't like about this book were the huge coincidences, the fact that there were so many elements in play, and the snails pace the plot moved at. Along with the historical, mystery, and romance elements, Dani also has some psychic abilities, and there is a bit of what feels like fate in play as well. It felt like the author crammed a few too many ideas into the book, but it wasn't bad and I did end up liking this book. 

I wouldn't recommend this as the first book to read by this author. While I mostly enjoyed it, I feel like others are better. If you've never read Amy Harmon I would suggest starting with Making Faces, or if you like fairy tale type fantasy, start with The Bird and the Sword.

Thanks to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for providing me with an ARC of this book.