Review: "Jackal" by Erin E. Adams

Jackal by Erin E. Adams
Published October 2022 via Bantam
★★★

Every year, a Black girl goes missing in Johnstown. Sometimes her body turns up later; sometimes she's never found. The police do nothing. Liz has been aware of some of the dangers for years, but she's also long since moved away—and it's not until Liz returns for a wedding and her best friend's daughter is taken that she starts to understand the scope of the problem, and how little the people around her choose to care.

Conceptually, I love this: here is an author tackling the deaths that don't get media attention, the voices that don't get heard—in this small town, the police are ready and willing to declare each death an accident, or to blame it on animals, or to otherwise look the other way, because as far as society is concerned these are not girls who count.

In practice, I was looking for something else. I love a classic psychological thriller—one that keeps me awake at night, scared that there is someone outside the window. I want to be afraid for the protagonist, and I want to see her work to figure out who is responsible and how to keep them from doing more harm. Jackal turned out to have something of a supernatural bent, and while it works on a metaphorical/allegorical level, very little of Liz's time seemed to be spent on, you know, desperately seeking her friend's beloved daughter, and only towards the end did there seem to be any real risk to Liz. (Does this sound kind of callous? It's not meant to be–I want a thriller to properly scare me, which this one didn't; I also want to care about the characters enough to worry about them, and here, when a character is murdered, it makes little impact.)

There's still a really valuable story in here—one of violence that goes unchecked because the authorities value some people more than others, and of characters like Liz unlearning the lesson that they have to fit themselves into certain boxes. Jackal wasn't quite the plot/style I was hoping for, but I'll keep my eyes peeled for something similar without the supernatural elements.