The Comfort of Monsters by Willa C Richards

I would like to thank Anne from Random Things Tours and Point Blank Crime for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Point Blank Crime

Published – Out Now

Price – £8.99 paperback £4.99 Kindle eBook

In the summer of 1991, teen Dee McBride vanished in the city of Milwaukee. It was the summer the Journal Sentinel dubbed ‘the deadliest . . . in the history of Milwaukee.’ Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s heinous crimes dominated the headlines and the disappearance of one girl was easily overlooked.

2019, nearly thirty years later, Dee's sister, Peg, is still haunted by her disappearance. Desperate to find out what happened to her, the family hire a psychic and Peg is plunged back into the past. But Peg’s hazy recollections are far from easy to interpret and digging deep into her memory raises terrifying questions. How much trust can we place in our own recollections? How often are our memories altered by the very act of speaking them aloud? And what does it mean to bear witness in a world where even our own stories about what happened are inherently suspect?

I’ve talked before of my distrust of true crime. It loves to focus on the spectacle of the killer, the mistakes of the police and often the victim still gets side-lined. Think how many we know the killer of but not the victim and perhaps worse what for those who just…vanish…never seen again with no explanation. Families forever feeling a gap in their lives and never knowing what happened. This is the heart of the mystery in the haunting The Comfort of Monsters by Willa C Richards where we examine the impact on one family forever.

In 1991 in Milwaukee Dee McBride a young college girl vanished and is never seen again by anyone including her younger sister Peg. The story is lost in the noise of Milwaukee waking up to discover it had been homes to the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and so gained very little traction. The decades pass with no clues and in 2019 the children’s mother agrees with the family to try one last desperate time to trace her daughter a use of an infamous TV psychic. Peg and her remaining family members reluctantly agree to stump up the cash, but this releases a flood of memories for Peg leading up to the last time anyone saw her, and Peg’s own secrets gnaw away as she wonders if she will ever find any answers.

This is less a puzzle to solve and more a study in reminding us that every crime; every disappearance has a human being at its heart. A lesser writer would have just wrapped this tale into Dahmer’s story making him the star attraction but instead Richards puts the focus on Dee and Peg and the aftermath of one-person vanishing from the family. We see Peg a young student trying to learn being an adult experiencing her first relationship and trying to gain independence and then we see her years later – a lost soul recently unemployed for stealing library books at her place of work and feeling both adrift in life and guilty knowing the family is throwing money at a fake. While impossible to say that Peg may not have ended up like this if Dee had been around, we sense this experience and her own role in those final months leading up to it certainly pushed her in this direction and possibly drives her behaviour in ways she has not fully appreciated.

This is not the tale of the nuclear family torn apart by tragedy though. Dee’s family is working class and as young adults they are rebellious and hiding secrets from their family. Both siblings end up in toxic relationships and neither can support the other. Dee is kind charismatic, funny, artistic, and also sometimes a little selfish and likes her own secrets. Peg is just enjoying her first independence but starts putting her own world above others.

Richards captures a time where abuse in relationships was still something not openly discussed, and men would still be believed first. I really admired though how this tale does use the setting to explore how Milwaukee was a town with an ignorant police force, rampant homophobia, and a desire to avoid bad publicity that meant those who didn’t fit the profile fo the victim get ignored. We see the gay clubs advertise missing people who no one else seemed interested in. With Dee we also get someone the police are far to happy to chalk off as just another runaway. Fast forward to 2019 and now the town likes to trade on it’s infamous visit with murder tours, psychic events and event merchandise sold in pubs. The family trying to use a psychic to find Dee is just another sign of a world where those deemed not that interesting get too desperate to find the truth they do the most unwise things. Even theory years later our respect for those impacted by crime is more on sensationalism rather than any moral desire to help.

There is a slow burn mystery to solve but it is not the focus of the story. In many ways this story is explaining why that mystery of Dee’s disappearance was never solved quickly. Peg will not be an amazing detective breaking the case, but we do see the modern world and the next generation of the family with different attitudes may see some avenues they could never dream of. The ending is ultimately open-ended but suggest some form of closure may finally happen, but the price of the recent events may still be too high.

The Comfort of Monsters is a sobering reminder that every crime hurts someone be they victim or family member and an uncaring world will just allow these things to happen and not seek justice after the fact. Richards writes this tale with a mix of compassion and insight into how society engineers these situations and never redresses them. If you fancy a thoughtful mystery drama, then this tale would be perfect for these chilly January nights. Highly recommended!