I was wandering through some of the old reviews on this site, and I found a review of An End to a Silence, by W. H. Clark. I liked the book quite a lot and noted that I wished the sequel were available (it’s intended as a trilogy). I checked again now, and found that the second book, If I Scream, is out, so I bought it. It has most of the virtues of the first book, and engaged me deeply. Except for one thing…

A young woman, pale and emaciated, appears along a Montana highway. A kindly man stops to help her, and seeing her condition and hearing her say something about being held a prisoner, he heads for the police station. But on the way she distracts him, and he smashes into a car in an intersection. They are both rushed to a hospital, where the young woman quickly dies.

This is a case for Ward, the mysterious, taciturn former Texas Ranger, now a Montana policeman. Kidnapping and the abuse of children are things he obsesses about. But his bosses won’t devote a lot of resources to the case, because a serial killer has started working in the area. The murderer kills in various ways, and it’s hard to see what connects the men he’s murdering. So Ward is left to work the case as he can, with the help of a cop named Mallory, a victim of child abuse himself and a pariah on the force because of the things he once did at the bidding of his abuser.

Stories about child abuse chill and fascinate me, and If I Scream did the same. It’s very well-written and bears the marks of deep compassion.

My main complaint is how dark the book is. When you’re writing about as grim and tragic a subject as this, I think it’s a good idea to offer the reader a little hope. There isn’t much hope in If I Scream. It troubles me to think what a serious abuse victim might conclude from reading this story.

I do look forward to the next volume, if there is one (this book came out in 2017). If the final volume appears, I hope it has a more uplifting ending.