Richard Montanari’s The Buried Girl will hook readers on page one and never let them go. The complicated story resonates long after the last page is turned.

Dr. William Hardy, forensic psychologist, teaches at NYU, consults on television crime shows, and is basking in his first book, revolving around psychopaths in certain movies.

When he agrees to see a troubled young man, he cannot anticipate how that encounter will change his entire world. Suddenly he finds himself without a wife, left with a fifteen-year old daughter who blames him for her mother’s death.

Then Will finds he’s inherited an old mansion that used to be run as a bed and breakfast in rural Ohio. Taking a reclusive Detta away from New York City and bringing her to this small town, he hopes to restart their lives and their relationship.

At the same time, Chief of Police Ivy Lee Holgrave of Abbeville, Ohio and a police family, goes about her day, helping her mother after surgery, taking down low-lifes she encounters. But Ivy hides a secret investigation she’s pursued for decades: her own missing sister, Delia, whom she believes to yet another victim of the unclosed cases of young women who’ve gone missing in her area over the years.

When Will and Detta move to Abbeville, the two adults must join forces to run to ground this murderer, not realizing that Detta is in his crosshairs and might be the key to everything.

This suspenseful thriller had moments of warm reflection, whether it was of the setting or the character’s inner thoughts. Readers will be caught up in the story of Will and Detta, and of Ivy. No wonder James Ellroy calls Montanari “a master storyteller.”