Fans of Steven F. Havill's Posadas County and Lisa Regan's Josie Quinn series will enjoy this fascinating and complex story set in small-town Missouri.

"An outstanding police procedural that plunges readers into a community's nightmare. Readers of Steven F. Havill and Bill Crider will appreciate the novel's focus on small-town life and a local police force" Library Journal Starred Review

Branson Sheriff Hank Worth is one of the first on the scene of a mass casualty incident - a local fireworks warehouse has exploded, killing everyone inside. As over a dozen victims are pulled from the smoldering ruins, the painstaking identification process begins.

Chief Deputy Sheila Turley returns early from medical leave to assist in the office, while Hank delves deeper into the increasingly complicated situation at the morgue. He discovers that the previous forensic pathologist was hasty at best and negligent at worst. What starts as an offhand request to look into the errors turns into a discovery that shakes Hank's world off its axis . . .

With Hank secretly investigating his discovery at the morgue, his short-handed team is stretched to the brink as it investigates the cause of the explosion. Then a shocking revelation leaves Sheila and her fellow deputies scrambling for answers to an unexpected crime. Just what happened in the warehouse in the moments before the blast? Can they unravel the mysteries in time to save Branson from yet more heartbreak? And can Hank, adrift and alone, figure out what happened before it destroys everything he holds dear?

Formerly a crime reporter for daily newspapers throughout the United States, Claire Booth has used this experience to write five previous Sheriff Hank Worth mystery novels based on small-town American life. She is also the author of one non-fiction book, The False Prophet: Conspiracy, Extortion, and Murder in the Name of God. She lives in California.