Kate Moretti’s In Her Bones is a suspenseful mystery that turns the serial killer trope on its head by focusing on the family’s perspective. Edie Beckett is living in the shadow of her mother’s conviction for the murder of six women. Obsessively voyeuristic, she spends most of her time stalking the families of her mother’s victims until one is murdered and the investigation turns toward Edie.

The story is told from three perspectives: the main protagonist of Edie, the detective who put her mother behind bars, and excerpts from an in-depth biography on Edie’s mother that read like clinical case notes. The strength of Moretti’s tale lies in Edie, a woman who is smart and sly, shattered by the past and struggling with her identity. She is the perfect unreliable narrator, on the run and striving to prove her innocence even as she—and the reader—wonders what she might be truly capable of and if she is truly innocent. She is as much of victim of her mother as the women who were brutally murdered, but as I read I was led to wonder if she was very much her mother’s daughter. That tension drove the tale along brilliantly.

In Her Bones begins slowly with a bit of foundation-laying for the characters. The story is tautly plotted, though not fast paced, and the characterizations are impeccably and authentically drawn. Moretti’s prose is crisp and chilling, the story is layered and haunting, and the excerpts from the case study on Edie’s mother read like a true crime documentary.

This is a clever, twisted tale, dark and deeply psychological. A surprising amount of emotion is woven into the mystery, because at its heart, In Her Bones is a heartrending portrait of a damaged psyche and a poignant exploration of the repercussions of mental illness.

Highly recommended for fans of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries with a humane, empathetic tone.