A Mercy Carr Mystery

After their last deployment, when she got shot, her fiancé, Martinez, got killed, and his bomb-sniffing dog, Elvis, got depressed, soldier Mercy Carr and Elvis were both sent home, her late lover’s last words ringing in her ears: “Take care of my partner.” On the Fourth of July weekend, when all of Northshire celebrates with fun and frolic and fireworks, the dog alerts to explosives and they find a squalling baby abandoned near a shallow grave filled with what appear to be human bones. 

It’s October, hunting season in the Green Mountains - and the Vermont wilderness has never been more beautiful or more dangerous. Especially for nine-year-old Henry, who’s lost in the woods. Again. Only this time, he sees something terrible. When a young woman is found shot through the heart with a fatal arrow, Mercy thinks that something is murder. But Henry, a math genius whose autism often silences him when he should speak up most, is not talking.  

When her late grandfather’s deputy calls Mercy to his deathbed, the former MP and her sniffer dog, Elvis, inherit the cold case that haunted him - and may have killed her grandfather. But finding Beth Kilgore 20 years after she disappeared is more than a lost cause. It’s a Pandora’s box releasing a rain of evil on the very people Mercy and Elvis hold most dear. Most at risk may be her grandmother, and Mercy and Elvis must team up with Vermont Game Warden Troy Warner and his search-and-rescue dog, Susie Bear, to save her from the man who murdered her husband.