Search Angel

Author's Comments:
Search Angel was a harrowing novel for me to write.  “The Searcher” came from a place I’d never known and, like Ashley Stassler, he brooked little interference from me.  I consider this novel to contain some of the fiercest passages I’ve ever written.  If you found either HUSH or The Bone Parade too much for your sensibilities, stay away from Search Angel.  But if want an uncompromisingly dark story, by all means open the book.

Praise for Mark Nykanen’s Search Angel:

"Nykanen is a master of knowing what scares us deep down...Words have power, and Nykanen knows their secrets. He knows how to take those marks on a page and shape them into something deliciously horrible."
Salem Statesman Journal

"Nykanen crafts another masterfully creepy thriller."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"A thrilling page-turner"
The Oregonian

"Takes you deep into Hannibal Lector territory... great page-turning escapism...Nykanen deftly alternaties viewpoints as he goes deep into the nether regions of a killer's brain."
Lansing State Journal

"Readers will come face-to-face with one of the most disturbing villains since Hannibal Lector."
The Vancouver Sun (British Columbia)

"A creepy but effective mystery-thriller... Nykanen--a former Emmy-winning NBC news reporter--knows how to spin a compelling thriller."
The Province (Vancouver, British Columbia)

Publisher Comments:

A riveting suspense thriller about the reuniting of birth mothers with their adopted children and the madman who preys on them.

After two highly praised psychological thrillers, Mark Nykanen returns with his most spellbinding story yet. Suzanne Trayle is a Search Angel whose success in tracking down and reuniting birth mothers with their adopted children has earned her national fame. Known as "The Orphan's Private Eye," Suzanne has reunited thousands of mothers with their children, but has failed to find the son she put up for adoption thirty years ago.

A serial killer dubbing himself "The Searcher" contacts Suzanne, claiming to have located her now-grown child. In a chilling twist, The Searcher systematically begins to murder Suzanne's clients, and vows to kill her son and his family -- including Suzanne's only grandchild -- if she tries to stop him. Who is The Searcher, and why has he targeted Suzanne and her family and started killing her clients? These are the horrifying questions Suzanne struggles with, and her attempt to answer them turns Search Angel into one of the most harrowing thrillers of our time.

Ingeniously plotted and nightmarishly realistic, Search Angel is a fearsome tale steeped in love, hate, and the unbridled terror that can link them both.