In this spin-off from the popular Raine Stockton Dog Mystery Series, Former Hanover County Sheriff Buck Lawson leaves the mountains of North Carolina to take a job as the police chief of the small south Georgia town of Mercy, and soon finds himself in over his head. For one thing, his predecessor has been murdered…
Leaving behind two failed marriages and a job that almost cost him his life, Buck is seeking a fresh start for himself and his new family. But Mercy is a town with a past as dark as the Blood River that runs through it, and the crime that resulted in the death of the beloved former chief of police may have its roots in an evil that goes back generations.
Buck has inherited an unsolved homicide, a house that may well be haunted and a police department that is almost certainly corrupt. It falls to Buck to free an innocent man and bring the former police chief’s killer to justice while he wades through the quagmire of incompetence and dishonesty that permeates his office.
His efforts are both hampered and assisted by a benevolent despot of a mayor who runs the town like her own fiefdom and is known to bend the law to suit her convenience. His only true ally, Buck comes to understand, is the dead man himself.
When a young college student goes missing, Buck has reason to suspect foul play that may involve one of his police officers. He must rely on his gut to point him to those he can trust. But as the evidence leads him closer to an unthinkable truth, he realizes he is retracing the footsteps of the former police chief. Will the path lead him, as it did his predecessor, to his grave?
