Murder in the Old Wood

About this book

Eight hundred years ago, a forest drowned. The trees are still standing — black, dead, knee-deep in freezing water. And someone just died trying to keep people away from them.

His name was Hollis Trant. They found him on the pier in the morning, face to the water, and the county wrote it down as a fall. Sam Blackwood read the report once and knew better. The frost was clean — no scuff, no drag, no sign a man had slipped. Trant had walked that pier for forty years. He didn't fall. Someone put him there.

Sam used to work homicide. Now she works something harder to explain. For six days a cold weight on her hand has pulled her north, toward this dying town at the edge of the map, toward the drowned wood and the black water and whatever is buried underneath it — something an old organization has spent a hundred and seventy-seven years trying to dig up, buy out, or take by force. They have never managed it. Trant was the latest man standing in their way. Now he's gone, the paperwork says accident, and a stranger with the wrong kind of patience has started asking about the land.

What's under that water can't be owned. Sam is starting to understand that it can only be kept — and that keeping it is going to cost her more than she has. She has a ghost who's been dead since 1923, a dog who notices things before she does, and a handful of days before the town signs the wood away for good.

One body. One pier the frost says is lying. One detective who won't let it.

Perfect for readers who love:

★ A sharp, no-nonsense older heroine who cracks cases with logic, not luck ★ A haunted small town, a ghost partner, and a dog who's smarter than half the suspects ★ Slow-burn supernatural suspense — atmosphere and chills, no gore, nothing graphic ★ The cold, foggy, deeply atmospheric coast of Downeast Maine ★ A twisty whodunit that plays fair and lands its ending

DEATH AT PENHALLOW REACH is Book 9 of The Moonhaven Mysteries — and every book is a complete, standalone mystery with a real ending and no cliffhanger, so you can begin right here.

Step onto the pier. Read the frost. Scroll up and start today.