Murder at Haven’s Rock

Armstrong’s excellent first entry in a Rockton spinoff series (after 2022’s Deepest of Secrets) finds Casey Butler and her husband, Sheriff Eric Dalton, who met in Rockton, a Yukon town intended to serve as a refuge for those, such as domestic abuse victims, for whom the legal system’s protections were insufficient, resolved to use her substantial inheritance to self-fund construction of a similar community, Haven’s Rock, after the ideals of Rockton were compromised. The new venture begins badly. Yolanda, the contractor in charge of the project, calls on Casey and Eric for their tracking skills when two members of her team—Penny, the architect, and Bruno, the engineer—disappear after violating the worksite’s prime rule not to wander into the thick neighboring forest. Casey and Eric encounter an unknown person who first flees, and then steals Casey’s backpack after she falls into a camouflaged pit. There, she makes a grim discovery—the stabbed corpse of a woman, who Yolanda says is not her missing employee. Armstrong gives her lead a complex mystery to solve, while vividly evoking the eerie isolation of the setting. Paul Doiron fans will be pleased. Agent: Lucienne Diver, Knight Agency. (Feb.)