ELEMENT OF DANGER

Jenny O’Rourke continues her investigation into her family’s occult connections in this, the second volume of the Element series of mysteries.

A few months after her father was arrested along with the other leaders of his secret society—dubbed “the Punishers” by the media—O’Rourke hopes the cult’s crimes are history. Then she sees on the news that her friend Katie Dorcy has been found dead in the creek behind Red Rock Farm. It is the same farm where Jenny grew up and where the order conducted its deadly rituals. Jenny is still traumatized by her own near fatal run-in with the order, and the cult’s infamy has made a tourist attraction of her tiny hometown of Brandtville, Pennsylvania, now known as “Bloody Brandtville.” Jenny can’t help but blame herself for Katie’s death, and she and her boyfriend, Ryan Brandt (whose father was also one of the Punishers) set to work investigating it. A symbol found on Katie’s body suggests that one of the Punishers is still at large and may be trying to reestablish the order. When Jenny runs into a figure from her past, an opportunity presents itself: Can she discover the truth about what happened to Katie by joining the order herself? In this second volume of the Element trilogy, Slawecki writes with urgency and imagination, speeding the plot along between sinister locations and tense interactions. The primary flaw, such as it is, is that the characters tend to speak in the melodramatic vernacular of reality TV contestants. (Even the narration sometimes slips into this language. When Jenny learns that Katie’s husband suspects that she was having an affair, she thinks, “Whoa! Mind blown. She never mentioned any of this to me.”) While the informality is sometimes a mood-killer, it is by no means a book-ruiner, and the story is intricate enough to keep the reader invested. Both the author and Jenny take the threats seriously enough to prevent the more contrived elements of the plot from pushing the book into the realm of camp. Fans of The Da Vinci Code or True Detective will enjoy this maximalist mix of crime, conspiracy, and the occult.

A largely satisfying second volume that brings new plot threads to the Element series.