Have you ever thought about what a crossover between Criminal Minds and Silence of the Lambs, but with teenage protagonists, would look like? Well, look no further because I have just the book for you! None Shall Sleep by Ellie Marney is a young adult psychological thriller that takes you back to the summer of 1982, where you follow Emma Lewis and Travis Bell in a hunt to track down a serial killer.
Emma and Travis are relatively normal young adults. Emma, a native Ohioan, is a freshman at OSU while Travis is on the fast track to become a U.S Marshal cadet, following in the footsteps of his father. See, relatively normal with only one thing in common: their connections to serial killers. Emma survived one, running fast and hard to safety, while Travis’s father was murdered by a serial killer during a hostage situation. The two of them have skills in profiling that Special Agent Edmund Cooper is looking for, and it’s why he goes to them in hopes of starting a new group within the newly formed Behavioral Analysis Unit. This group would consist of young people that interview juvenile offenders, the idea being that young people would open up more to their peers than to authority figures.
Very logical!
Honestly, what could go wrong?
Emma and Travis agree to join, each with their own personal reasons to do so. It doesn’t take long until they are pulled into the current investigation in Pennsylvania where a killer that only targets teenagers is at large. Things get even more complicated when there seems to be a connection between the crimes in Pennsylvania and the juvenile offender that Emma just interviewed, the infamous Simon Gutmunsson. Simon just so happens to be the same serial killer that murdered Travis’s father, and has an uncanny way of digging deep into Emma’s head each time they speak (uh-oh). In order to catch the bad guy, Emma becomes a conduit between Simon and the FBI in order to get more information out of him, all the while walking a dangerous line between Simon’s strange darkness and the pull that he has, and the dangers of the job she’s found herself in. But as they dig deeper and deeper into the case, secrets are revealed and maybe, just maybe, Simon knows more than he’s saying and only Emma and Travis can figure out just what he’s hiding.
You can see how things can go wrong now, right? If you want to find out how the story progresses and the lengths Emma and Travis will go to to save lives, I highly suggest giving this book a try.
A sequel, Some Shall Break was released in June of this year!