Following his Edgar winning debut novel, The Blue Edge of Midnight: A Max Freeman Mystery, Johnathon King delivers a deliciously intense and engrossing story in A Visible Darkness . However this intensity differs because the reader knows who the killer is from page 1, but why is Eddie killing the elderly matriarchs of African American families? The second mystery of Manchester and Freeman matriarchs is slowly revealed showing the same symmetry and dichotomy of the main question, why. Marrying his reporter’s skills of observation and knowledge of people, King shows the reader how a visible darkness shadows a neighborhood like that Manchester is from but can never go back to, it is his buddy ex-cop, Max Freeman, he enlists to help unravel the murders of old widows who should be safe in their homes.
Back in his shack that he leases from the State of Florida, Max Freeman is still recovering from the notoriety and unintended consequences from his last outing into civilization months before when he hunted and became the prey of a child serial killer. Freeman acknowledges the subtle changes: he now carries a cell phone and checks his dock stairs for footprints and accepts the new park ranger’s passive-aggression. So when, Billy Manchester said “his voice straight and efficient. “Max, I need your help.” Freeman leaves his beloved river for the city streets without hesitation.
Max is a little dubious at first to believe that little old ladies are being murdered after they sold their life insurance policies to an investment group, especially after talking to Detective. Richards. The Broward County ME office and law enforcement believe the women died of natural causes. Soon after one of the life insurance company sends down a bigoted investigator that he is forced to work with, Freeman agrees with his friend that something is not right. And without a beat or a badge Freeman falls into his cop-beat rhythm forming unlikely alliances in the black neighborhood’s drug zone to catch a killer in an investigation that has its own twists and turns.