The Laughing Dead cover art

The Laughing Dead

Steinbeck and Reed, Book 3

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About this listen

Two murder investigations, decades apart, threaten to expose a cold case agent’s darkest secrets in a pulse-pounding thriller by the Edgar Award-nominated author of The Taken Ones.

The bodies of three teenage girls are found in central Minnesota—each with her mouth fixed in a ghoulish grin, smiling at a deadly joke no one can hear. But authorities eventually close and forget the curious case, dubbed the Laughing Dead.

Decades later, cold case agent Evangeline “Van” Reed is called to the scene of a crime where the victim wears that same horror-movie smile. But this time someone seems to be sending a message: Van’s police ID has turned up at the scene, making her the prime suspect. It’s not that outlandish, considering her secrets—ones she’s never even told her partner, forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck.

As she feels others closing in, Van reopens the mystery of the Laughing Dead, hoping to find a connection to clear her name. But the search only gets darker. Because the more Van digs backward in time, the closer she comes to a terrible truth: Everything she has spent her life trying to hide is returning to haunt her.

©2025 by Jess Lourey. (P)2025 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Crime Crime Thrillers Mystery Police Procedurals Suspense Thriller & Suspense Women Sleuths Exciting Scary Fiction Murder Cold Case

Critic reviews

“Through some expert plot twists that Jess Lourey throws at us, we will be surprised by how this unpredictable story gets resolved. [Leaving] the door wide open for the fourth entry in the series.”—The BookReporter

“Turn on the lights and check your locks before settling down with Jess Lourey’s latest thriller. The Laughing Dead is a tense, twisty read that will grab you by the throat and won’t let go until you race to the very last, spectacularly creepy page.”—Melinda Leigh, #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author

“Jess Lourey slays in this spellbinding, spine-tingling mystery and thriller about Evangeline Reed, a complex and intriguing protagonist whose personal history and desire for justice make her perfect to take on the case of the Laughing Dead. The story explores Van’s dark and tragic past, her struggles with guilt and forgiveness, and her fight for redemption and deliverance from evil. Writing from multiple perspectives, Lourey weaves an intricate tale of despair and hope, leading to an explosive and gripping climax that had my jaw dropping to the floor.”—Yasmin Angoe, author of the Nena Knight trilogy and Not What She Seems
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Found the story slow and because of this found the whole thing hard to follow!

Hard to follow

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Audio performance is very good and I appreciate the books being included in KU. These books are very well-written but Van is too flawed a character for me to continue with this series. The phrase “too stupid to live” applies. I don’t want to write spoilers but hypothetically, if you discovered that someone had secretly been in your apartment while you were there and then had left and murdered someone, would you later go straight back to sleep in your apartment on your own? This is just one of her dumb decisions, in service of advancing the plot.

Flawed character taken too far.

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