The Reckoning

SHE KILLED A MAN.
> HE DESERVED IT.
> BUT JUSTICE ISN'T YET DONE.
>

First in an explosive new thriller series set in the eighties from the author of the critically acclaimed Miranda Corbie series introduces the fierce feminist Renata Drake--on the run from the FBI for the execution-style murder of her little sister's killer.

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"Vivid and haunting. I'm eager to hear more from the tenacious and resourceful Renata Drake" Meg Gardiner, #1 New York Times bestselling author

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California, Southern Humboldt County, 1985.
Renata Drake steps off a Greyhound bus and into small-town Garberville, hoping to disappear. She checks the papers. She's not headline news. Not yet.
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But she's made a mistake. The FBI have the cannabis-producing "Emerald Triangle" town-- and its corrupt residents--in their sights. Even worse, a teenage girl is missing, and when she turns up dead, the third in three years, it's clear a serial killer is living among them.
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Renata knows about murdered girls and the burning desire for justice--and for revenge. Her younger sister Josie is gone, and now, so is the man who killed her. Renata didn't stay in Washington, D.C. to be arrested for executing a murderer, and she shouldn't stay here either. But Renata decides to investigate, and what she uncovers will trigger a final reckoning: For herself, for a killer, and for all of Southern Humboldt.
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This powerful, page-turning thriller explores the human cost of corruption and the psychological toll that violence takes on women.

Product details

• Authors: Stanley Kelli
• Publisher: Canongate
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 06.01.2026
• EAN: 9781448317547
• ISBN: 978-1-4483-1754-7
• No. of pages: 336
• Series: A Renata Drake Thriller
• Subjects: Fiction > Suspense; FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Historical, FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths, FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Amateur Sleuth, Crime & mystery, California, FICTION / Thrillers / Historical, Thriller / suspense, Historical crime and mysteries, Crime and mystery: private investigator / amateur detectives, c 1980 to c 1989, Thriller: serial killers