Part of Cork O'Connor
First published 2013
A blizzard bears down on Tamarack County just days before Christmas when the car of a retired judge's wife turns up empty on a back road. Cork O'Connor, the former sheriff turned private investigator, joins the search and rescue efforts. The team finds no trace of the missing woman after days of searching through the snow. Cork notices troubling details about her vanishing that others miss. When someone kills and decapitates his friend's dog, Cork sees connections to other violent incidents plaguing the county. His own son nearly falls into danger. Cork realizes someone is weaving a trap of revenge around a decades old murder case. An innocent man went to prison for that killing twenty years ago, and Cork led the investigation as a young deputy. Winter storms cut off Tamarack County from the outside world. Behind the swirling snow and lengthening darkness, someone seeks deadly payback. Cork races against time to stop the killer before his family and friends become victims of crimes they never committed.
Genres: american-fiction, suspense, mystery, crime, adult-fiction, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, fast-paced, gritty, suspenseful, tension-filled
Tropes: investigation-thriller, past-mistakes-resurface, personal-stakes, race-against-time
Setting: Tamarack County
Period: Christmas, Winter, Twenty years prior
320 pages · Kindle Edition · Atria Books
Content warnings: animal-death, murder, violence