A Lonesome Place for Murder: An Ethan Brand Mystery

Chase’s engrossing second outing for Ethan Brand (after A Lonesome Place for Dying) entangles the Blaine, Wash., police chief in a cold case with a disturbing personal connection. Hoping to buy a horse for his sons, Ethan drags his colleague, Brenda Lee Page, to the home of horse trader Mac Steranko. When they arrive, they find Mac injured after a horse he was riding stepped into a small hole. As Ethan and Brenda are poking around the scene, a larger hole opens up and Brenda falls into a tunnel, where she discovers a decaying male corpse. To Ethan’s shock, the dead man’s wallet identifies him as Tyler Rash, whom Ethan’s father had taken in as a wayward teen decades earlier. Given the tunnel’s proximity to the Canadian border, Ethan and Brenda suspect it could be the work of an international smuggling operation. As Ethan pursues that hunch, someone sends a bomb to his house, confirming he’s on to something but making him question whether justice for Tyler is worth risking his family’s lives. Chase makes Ethan’s inner conflict deeply relatable, and peppers the investigation with a handful of welcome surprises. This series continues to impress. Agent: Chris Casuccio, Westwood Creative Artists. (Aug.)