Whisper House Press

Book: Headlights

Author: CJ Leede

Publisher: Macmillan Publishers, Tor Nightfire imprint

Publication Date: 9 June, 2026

Capone’s Rating: 4⭐ of 5⭐

CJ Leede’s third novel, Headlights, is a doozy.

For those of us who’ve read her last two, Headlights reads as more ambitious, being more layered and multifaceted, than either of those other two. The novel suits those looking for a serial killer investigation story in the lineage of Stephen King’s The Outsider combined with a hint of Craig DiLouie’s The Children of Red Peak. Leede’s third book is a story of a law-enforcement agent with an unexplained personal tie to the killings, his own past linked to the serial killer’s mode of operation. Here’s the wild element of this take on a serial killer story: The antagonist behind the killings is not the one perpetrating the gruesome acts themselves. Serial murder-by-proxy is a new twist on an old classic, and Leede offers it with panache.

The book’s central protagonist is FBI special agent Daniel Stansfield, a man already at an emotional brink where Headlights’ opens and a growing snowball of trauma with a core nearly as old as he is. His reenlistment papers already in order, Stansfield is packing up his rather barren Salt Lake City life to ship back out for a military commitment that represents his giving up completely. But upon the reemergence in Colorado of the absentee murderer—akin to an absentee landlord but with rather less legal wrangling and rather more explicit maiming—Stansfield is pulled back to his tattered life in Denver. There, he’s yanked back into the FBI’s fold and into the renewed murder case, almost against his will but seemingly in line with fate.

Where this book shines is in the intertwining of the Big Bad’s mission and that of our main character, Daniel Stansfield. It’s tough to get too in-depth with this review as regards my absolute favorite elements of the story without giving away some of Leede’s best moves. I’ll keep to the general: The characters’ personal journeys cannot be completed without others’ choices, and those choices wouldn’t be believable through the hands and out of the mouths and minds of any other characters but those from whom they spring. Each character is so fully realized such that their choices seem to be, at the time of their effect and in spite of our wishes to the contrary, absolutely required of them. That sparkle, there—that’s Leede’s doing, and it’s not an easy feat. Where the story leaves something to be desired is in a spot it’s tough to discuss without spoiling, except to say that this reader, in his wholly subjective perspective, was a bit thrown by a structural shift late in the tale.

All considered, CJ Leede’s third novel is compelling, unique, deeply woven, and—most importantly—an unputdownable success.