Some people don't go missing.
They fade away.

When a thirty-year-old man fails to return from a weekend trip, private investigators Lawrence Hoskins and Cass Fletcher are hired by his partner to find him. Initial signs suggest he left of his own free will ? but the silence he leaves behind feels heavy, deliberate, and wrong.

As Fletcher is pulled away by a crisis of her own, Hoskins is left to follow the trail alone. Navigating blind, he arrives at the one place he never would have associated with the reserved, troubled man he's been learning about ? Starlake City. A glittering sprawl of excess known as the Vegas of the north. A city that never sleeps, never apologizes, and never forgets.

In this hedonistic dystopia, Hoskins learns of those who rule from the shadows and know how to exploit their most defenseless assets. In their world, control doesn't always look like force. Sometimes it looks like comfort. Like belonging. Like the family you never had.

While Hoskins is risking everything to find a man who refuses to be found, Fletcher is facing demons of her own ? confronting losses from her past that threaten to pull her under. Some wounds never close. And some cases demand a price that can't be survived unchanged.

Perfect for fans of Michael Connelly and Dennis Lehane ? gritty, character-driven crime novels that explore the fragile line between survival and surrender.

Hello Darkness is the seventh book in the Hoskins & Fletcher crime series, and can be read as a standalone novel.