Early on in The Dead Season, Shana Merchant, senior investigator for upstate New York's Bureau of Criminal Investigation, is called "the badass who solved the bloodiest case these parts have seen in years." She's also three weeks into a suspension, her fitness-for-duty psych evaluation imminent. As readers of Tessa Wegert's equally absorbing Death in the Family know, the previous year, Shana was held hostage by serial killer Blake Bram, who is still at large, and she's far from over the experience.
Since she's on leave, Shana heads home to Swanton, Vt., as soon as her parents share some disturbing news: the bones of her ne'er-do-well uncle have just been discovered in a local wildlife refuge. The police estimate that the man has been dead for two decades, which corresponds with the time that he left his wife and kids for a new life in Philadelphia. (Or so they thought.) While in Swanton, Shana gets word of a horrific new crime back in upstate that she knows Bram is behind.
Readers who can accept Shana's decision to withhold her personal relationship to Bram from her colleagues will find her quite redoubtable as she sets out to solve two crimes; she may recall Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan, among other unrepentant female investigators from modern crime fiction. Shana, who narrates The Dead Season, admits that "the fact that I'd worked the case on Tern Island while still wrestling with PTSD was irresponsible on every level," but that doesn't mean she's sorry she did it. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer