Agent: Alexandra Machinist, ICM Partners. Fans of psychologically rich thrillers will hope for more from Rutkoski. Im going to the beach next week & I have a stack of thrillers on my TBR.

Her debut for adults, REAL EASY (January 18, 2022), is a literary crime novel. She’s especially good at making the strippers more than clichés. Marie Rutkoski is the New York Times bestselling author of several books for children and young adults, including THE HOLLOW HEART (September 14, 2021). Rutkoski uses the familiar plot of a police search for a killer targeting women to paint moving portraits of desperate lives on both sides of the law. Amador investigates, with the help of colleague Holly Meylin, who is still traumatized by her infant’s accidental death due to her ex-husband’s negligence. The exact cause of death isn’t immediately clear, but the coroner finds date-rape drugs in the woman’s system, and the figure of a crown was carved into the sole of one foot. Bestselling young adult and children’s author Marie Rutkoski’s first novel for adult readers, Real Easy, begins by immersing us in the atmosphere of the Lovely Lady, a Midwestern strip club where the dancers are at once uninhibited and reticent, disserved by hurdles in their lives yet unapologetic about their desire to overcome them.

When he responds, he finds blood and, eventually, the corpse of a woman who worked at a nearby strip club. Victor Amador, a police detective in an unnamed state, is hoping for a quiet overtime shift when he gets a call to investigate a report of an abandoned car in a ditch. YA and children’s author Rutkoski ( The Kronos Chronicles) makes her adult debut with a haunting crime novel.

Real easy by marie rutkoski