by Barbara Nickless
Release Date: July 1st, 2026
2026 Thomas & Mercer
Ebook ARC; 359 Pages
ISBN: 978-1662533730
ASIN: B0FTGGHSWL
Audiobook: B0G2CZXLZT
Genre: Fiction / Mystery
Source: Review copy from publisher
3 / 5 Stars
Summary
When a husband, wife, and son are murdered in their Denver home and the family’s teenage twins vanish, the case draws the attention of FBI profilers Helen Belle and Benedict Hoffman. It triggers more than professional alarm. It mirrors a horrific case they investigated five years ago, when a boy slaughtered his family and went mute after speaking only a handful of haunting words. Among them: Midnight Man.
Then, nearly thirteen hundred miles away, one of the twins is found dead in a snowy Ohio field, and the parallels between the past and present cases grow more disturbing. Identical suicide notes. The same symbolic blood imagery. And a shared obsession with an online fantasy game. Its mastermind is an influencer who manipulates his most vulnerable and alienated players into killing the people they love most.
The Midnight Man is back.
Then, nearly thirteen hundred miles away, one of the twins is found dead in a snowy Ohio field, and the parallels between the past and present cases grow more disturbing. Identical suicide notes. The same symbolic blood imagery. And a shared obsession with an online fantasy game. Its mastermind is an influencer who manipulates his most vulnerable and alienated players into killing the people they love most.
The Midnight Man is back.
My Thoughts
A Voice in the Dark had an interesting premise and I definitely enjoyed the discussion around the dangers of the internet, gaming, and how predatory it can be for those who are vulnerable, but I quickly got bored with the endless repetition and the constant back and forth between the teams and what was going on. And let me clear, I love a good police procedural, right down to the tiniest detail, but this one felt more like filler, it was unclear as to the actual jobs/roles of the protagonists, and overall, it was a bit messy in its execution.
First of all, the main characters were mostly one-dimensional and while I enjoyed them, there was nothing that really stands out about them. Even after looking back at this book a month after reading it, the characters feel almost non-existent and I had to look over my notes to really remember who was who and who did what, which is not like me as I have a pretty good memory for books and stories. Benedict and Helen have a history (of course they do) and this is reflected in a lot of the story line (completely unimportant to the story) and some of the plot deviates to whatever happened between them, but really it was so fluffy as to be laughable. Some development of their personalities would have been nice, but I really can't distinguish much between them at this point.
I did enjoy the discussion around the dangers around the internet, lurking, and gaming, but some of the terminology regarding gaming was not correct and this irked me to no end. I am not a huge gamer, but I do know that NPC does not stand for non-character player, but actually stands for non-player character. And the whole discussion around the game master bothered me as well as they don't have control of people's lives like it was discussed in this book. Can people become so involved in video games they lose track of time? Absolutely. Can people become addicted to certain video games? Definitely. Can they have an averse affect on people? For sure. But, to have a game master control your game? No, I don't think so as it sounds more sci-fi to me. However, a group of toxic people interacting in a game can definitely be problematic, but that was not what was presented in this book.
However, that being said, I did find the actual mystery and crimes to be interesting and there was certainly a lot to discuss surrounding the themes of mental health in this book, that's for sure. I actually don't think the author went far enough in defending some of the mental health issues that were presented in this book, but a good attempt was certainly made and I appreciated that aspect of this story. The author does make some good arguments with regards to how society views mental health and how we respond to it in general, showing how much work still needs to be done. Unfortunately, I struggled with the execution of the plot as well as the constant repetitiveness of events and explanations every time a new character was introduced and I started flipping the pages to get to the more interesting stuff.
Verdict
A Voice in the Dark definitely had potential and there were certainly a lot of very interesting, and valid, themes to be discussed within its pages. With the onset of video game therapy, this book presented a scary viewpoint to what could happen when things go sideways or when corporations are looking to monetize solutions that could be potentially harmful if abused. However, I did think the book suffered from lack of character development as they all felt bland and one-dimensional and I did think the execution of the plot was somewhat uneven leading me to become a bit bored by the halfway point. There was enough in this book however, that I would definitely be interested in seeing what this author will put out in the next book in this series so I will be reading the next one when it is published.
