The setting of this debut novel is Toronto, Canada. Readers of crime fiction may not find a story about the kidnap, rape and murder of an 11-year-old too startling, but in the hands of Elisabeth de Mariaffi, fans of these kinds of books will find themselves drawn into a crime that is 11 years old. The victim was Lianne Gagnon, and her disappearance still haunts the protagonist, Evie Jones, in THE DEVIL YOU KNOW.

Today she is a reporter who was best friends with the victim. She lives a post-traumatic stress life, always looking over her shoulder for demons.Her job at the paper has put her in the "morgue" down in the basement researching old crime stories that only feeds her paranoia. Told in the first person, these fears and anxieties become visceral for the reader as well as for Evie. Only one man was thought to have committed these evil acts, and the police think he also kidnapped and killed a string of missing girls.

"Readers will be holding their breath as the book nears its conclusion and the tension and danger ratchet up. de Mariaffi, who has written story collections in the past, has made the transition to novel writing perfectly."

Evie is on the prowl for information concerning the original suspect, a serial killer known as Paul Bernardo. She is determined to find him and make the police bring him to justice. That is, until some information surfaces that rocks her convictions and leads her to believe that he is not the perpetrator after all. This is when her life changes, and she finds herself in the crosshairs of the killer.

As the story unfolds, Evie finds an old photograph of a young woman she believes is her mother. The house in the photo is the one in which Evie grew up, and she becomes very nervous about the two men who are also in the picture. She shows the photo to David Patton, her friend and the boy for whom she used to babysit. They are very close, even though Evie is two years older. She is sure that she saw David's father in her house having a fight with her mother. Could he be the murderer? He is certainly not a nice man or a good father, but David is dumbstruck by Evie's suspicion.

Evie tries to keep her spirits up and wisecracks her way through the terrible assignment her editor has given her, dubbing it the "dead-girls weekend section." She also tells her editor that women are more afraid to be alone than men are. ("Every girl I knew had a repertoire of raucous, horrifying rape jokes. One way to own it, I guess.") de Mariaffi  brings the characters and action close to the reader by framing the narrative without explanation marks around the dialogue. This tense, character-driven novel makes for an atmosphere of almost feeling as though the reader is chatting with Evie and the other characters. Before the end of the story, she sees a man standing on her fire escape. Or does she?

Readers will be holding their breath as the book nears its conclusion and the tension and danger ratchet up. de Mariaffi, who has written story collections in the past, has made the transition to novel writing perfectly. Perhaps this Evie Jones story will be the beginning of a series. Let’s hope so!