P.M. Carlson

Severn House 2006
ISBN 978 0 7278 6388 1

Midnight in wintry Indiana. Her unsupportive new boss has sent Deputy Sheriff Marty Hopkins to report on an insignificant cabin fire in a remote area near the national forest. But the investigation takes on national importance and personal anguish when she finds a local man cruelly murdered, and his murderer vanished into thin air. Her search for the killer is complicated by a visiting lawyer from New York City and by two mysterious clowns. And how can Marty get any sleep when her teenage daughter insists on listening to that rock music?
Meanwhile her new boss and her ex-boss are battling, both demanding her loyalty, while the death toll mounts.

"Detective Marty Hopkins is back in a high-spirited adventure set in southern Indiana. The contrast between homey Hoosier hospitality and the lurking danger of Marty's current case makes for a satisfying read....Putting her own life at risk to solve the mystery, Marty uses her keen intelligence and hard-jawed tenacity to unearth the sad and shocking truth. A fine addition to this engaging series." ––Emily Melton, Booklist

"Ordered to check out a cabin fire in the Hoosier National Forest, Deputy Sheriff Marty Hopkins discovers a corpse pinned to the bedpost with a machete. The cabin is partly owned by an ex-cop who just happens to be Marty's enemy, a man who believes that women have no place on law enforcement.... A good read with plenty of action." ––Library Journal

"Despite the best efforts of her boss, Deputy Marty Hopkins (Deathwind, 2005, etc.) lands in the middle of an arson case that forces her to confront her own terrifying memories. The closer the Nichols County Sheriff's Department looks at Zill Corson's death, the more coldblooded it seems.... Marty's sight of Zill's burned corpse has reignited traumatic memories of her father, who died in 1975 when his car caught fire. But Zill's murder has a more initimate connection to the deaths, years since, of two other men attacked with machetes and burned to death. When Brooklyn ADA Olivia Mann, the daughter of one of the earlier victims, arrives in town to connect the dots, she steers the case away from Marty's dutiful round of questions and provokes a hyper-extended sequence on a narrow cliffside ledge of rock that's a textbook example of how to build suspense. A heartfelt, routine procedural capped by a virtuoso climax." ––Kirkus, Starred review