The Madness

Dawn Kurtagich

Graydon House, 2024

ASIN: B0CKFHZTLR

Available: Hardcover; paperback; Kindle edition

Buy:  Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com

Mina is often called to the psychiatric facility where she cares for women suffering from extreme trauma. She has contempt for how male doctors treat female patients and persistently tries to understand the roots of the problems she confronts in her practice. She is also troubled by something that has happened in her past, something bad enough to cause OCD, a move from Wales to London, a break-up with a man she loves, and estrangement from her best friend and even her mother. But it isn’t until she is faced with the mysterious illness of her childhood friend Lucy that she begins to face her own demons and slowly reveals the horrific event that has shaped her.

Unfortunately, from Mina’s perspective, helping Lucy will require going back to her home town and seeing her mother, whose belief in the dark and bloody myths of Wales suddenly begins to seem like useful information instead of annoying old stories. As the search for the cause of Lucy’s quickly worsening symptoms continue, some characters’ names (linking this book to a classic that readers will quickly recognize) shed light on the  direction of the plot, as do other elements such as a creepy black car, a black business card, and an exclusively secret gentlemen’s club. Lucy is not the only one in trouble.

The author of The Madness, Dawn Kurtagich, delivers non-stop suspense as the action takes us from a small Welsh town and its most luxurious mansion, out to an ancient castle on the coast where there are evil monsters preying upon women. However, these violent killers soon become the target of the group of women who have figured out how to get rid of all of them.

The way this book begins with a very brief, cryptic scene and a nameless character immediately draws the reader into the action, which continues at a quick pace as the author seamlessly shifts between times, places, perspectives, and emotions. There are subtle plot twists sparked by the unexpected decisions some characters make along the way. The Madness stands at the supernatural intersection of horrible crimes known– but left unsolved– and Mina’s revelations about the mythic evil that exists in never taking the past for granted.

Reviewed by Nova Hadley