by Shanna Hogan
First published 2019
Erin Corwin drives into the Mojave Desert one June morning and never comes home. The nineteen-year-old Marine wife is pregnant with her first child, living quietly with her husband Jon at the Twentynine Palms base in California. As temperatures soar past one hundred degrees, search teams comb Joshua Tree National Park for any trace of her. Nearly two months pass before her body surfaces at the bottom of an abandoned mine shaft, a makeshift garrote tight around her neck. Investigators focus on the couple next door. Christopher Lee, a fellow Marine, and his wife had grown close to the Corwins. Too close. Chris and Erin had begun a secret romance that spiraled into obsession, leaving the paternity of her unborn baby uncertain. While Lee claims he was hunting the day Erin disappeared, evidence tells a different story. As Erin browsed baby names online, Lee searched for methods to dispose of human remains. Through court documents and witness interviews, Shanna Hogan reconstructs a case where military friendships masked deadly deception.
Genres: suspense, mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: dark, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Mojave Desert, Joshua Tree National Park, Twentynine Palms
Period: June, 2010s
Audiobook · Findaway World Llc
Content warnings: murder, violence