First published 2023
FBI Agent Corrie Swanson stares at crime scene photos from 2008. Nine mountaineers vanished during a winter expedition in the New Mexico mountains. Searchers found their campsite abandoned. The climbers had slashed through their tent walls and fled barefoot into a deadly blizzard. Something had terrified them enough to choose certain death over staying inside. Only six bodies turned up initially. Two showed violent crushing injuries and missing body parts. The FBI coded the case "Dead Mountain" and filed it unsolved. Fifteen years later, two more corpses surface in a remote cave. One died by suicide. Swanson partners with archaeologist Nora Kelly to locate the final missing victim and solve what happened that night. Their investigation stirs something that has waited in the mountains. This ancient presence stalks Corrie and Nora, fighting to keep the ninth body hidden forever. The women must uncover the truth before they become the next victims of whatever drove those mountaineers to their deaths.
Genres: adventure, mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: dark, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: amateur-detective, ancient-mystery
Setting: New Mexico, Dead Mountain
Period: 2008, Fifteen Years Later
388 pages · Kindle Edition · Grand Central Publishing
Content warnings: violence