In the sixth entry in Kelley Armstrong's suspenseful Rockton series (after Alone in the Wild), Detective Casey Duncan and her boyfriend, Sheriff Eric Dalton, confront attacks in the Canadian wilderness and dark secrets concealed by their town's founders.
Rockton is an off-the-grid settlement where victims of crimes and criminals alike can disappear for two to five years, for a price. It's not a place open to outsiders, but when Casey and Eric stumble upon a hiker suffering from apparent stab wounds, they must bring her there. The victim speaks only Danish, but with the interpreting services of a new resident, they determine that her attacker seems to be one of the hostiles, people who live outside of Rockton who have reverted to a primal state. But some evidence suggests a different answer, and a possible connection to Casey's theory about the origin of the hostiles.
Although the Rockton series is set in the contemporary, real world, the town's isolation and limited access to technology creates an atmosphere similar to a historical western or post-apocalyptic science fiction. Fantasy fans who appreciate the level of detail required to bring an invented world to life may also enjoy that this intricately twisted mystery comes with equal attention to how such a community could function. New readers will quickly be brought up to speed, and series fans will eagerly consume new answers about questions at the core of Rockton's history. All will hotly anticipate the next installment. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library