Drowned in a Sea of Men

On the outskirts of San Diego, Nia Connolly regularly accepts gruesome items of crime scene evidence into her home, puts them on, and falls into a trance. Through her psychic visions, she is working with the SDPD to catch a brutal serial killer—and Nia relives each crime through the eyes of his latest victim. The killer, known as the Bounty Hunter, is known to drug his prey (always young men), dress them up, rape them, and mutilate their bodies. His crimes seem ever increasing in dramatic extravagance, and Nia wonders just how much more she can take. Luckily, she finds herself distracted from the horror of this investigation by an Irish movie star named Seamie Browne. She quickly falls for Seamie, despite knowing whether or not to trust him. As the hunt for the killer continues, it becomes apparent that the killer is hiding closer to Nia than she ever imagined.

Drawing on several Irish legends, this book manages to string along a diversity of narratives and characters into a cohesive whole. While it isn’t difficult to spot the killer, the book does keep you questioning and guessing whether or not you’re right, which fulfills the purpose of a true crime novel. The tone of the book wavers from deadly serious to outright goofy (in a rowdy bar fight scene, Nia smashes a beer bottle over the bouncer’s head) but these intercessions are always plaited neatly back into the main narrative of solving the crime. Running throughout is the desperate question of who can be trusted—and who cannot. Drowned in a Sea of Men is an intriguing read that tackles the darkest and most twisted parts of the human psyche. Is it possible for Nia to come back from the victim’s experiences unchanged? Will she able to put her full trust in another human being again? The book captures her inner struggle as a woman feeling alone and vulnerable, an island in a sea of coldly murdered men.