To Karl Alberg a quiet coastal town is exactly what he needs to soothe a psyche that's been battered by big-city police work. But this gentle paradise has more than its share of secrets. Bees buzz among the roses, and the local librarian is attractive, intriguing, and unattached. Perhaps he has at last come in from the cold. But a murder in small town can conceal a lot of secrets—some of them bleak enough to make a man yearn for some nice straightforward urban crime.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.

Meet Elvis Cole, L.A. private eye.... He quotes Jiminy Cricket and carries a .38. He's a literate, wisecracking Vietnam vet who is determined never to grow up.

Was the biggest case of his career the worst mistake he ever made? Ten years ago, DCI Jack Logan stopped the serial child-killer dubbed "Mister Whisper", earning himself a commendation, a drinking problem, and a broken marriage in the process...When another child disappears a hundred miles north in the Highlands, Jack is sent to lead the investigation and bring the boy home. But as similarities between the two cases grow, could it be that Jack caught the wrong man all those years ago?

As a decorated undercover DEA special agent, Garrett Kohl has traveled the world - and fought in most of it - but it’s the High Plains of northwest Texas he calls home and dreams of returning to one day. Kohl is in the middle of an assignment in Afghanistan when his commander orders him back to Texas on a short mission expected to take a week at most. But Kohl is unsettled to discover that he’s moving from one kind of war to another.