The Night Woods

Starred review from August 1, 2024

Despite pleas from her mother, former Army MP Mercy Carr cannot stay indoors during the last month of her pregnancy. She and her search-and-rescue dog, Elvis, head for the woods to visit classics professor Homer Grant. At his cabin, she finds a dead man. Homer and his dog Argos are missing. She and Elvis find them, but Homer is unconscious with a bleeding head wound. Homer assures Mercy he didn't kill the victim, with whom he was working on a new translation of The Odyssey. Before Mercy can investigate, she's summoned to an elite hunting lodge where the president of the club is missing. Her husband and another game warden soon find a body in a swamp, which might be connected to the other incidents. But Mercy is more concerned about a note she receives that could be related to her past in the military. In the last weeks of her pregnancy, Mercy has too many cases that could come crashing together at the wrong time. VERDICT Munier excels at multiple storylines in character-driven mysteries. This follow-up to Home at Night has a complex story that weaves together The Odyssey with murders and an account of returning veterans, such as Mercy and Elvis, who experience PTSD.--Lesa Holstine

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2024
A spate of murders in Vermont is somehow linked toThe Odyssey. Despite her experiences in the military police, Mercy Carr finds pregnancy the scariest thing she's ever faced. But her condition doesn't keep Mercy and her Belgian Malinois, Elvis, from hiking through the woods to visit Homer Grant and his bloodhound, Argos. Homer, a linguist who plays Scrabble for money with Mercy once a week, isn't in his cabin, but a dead man is, along with pages ofThe Odyssey strewn all over. Finding Homer badly wounded in the woods, Mercy fashions a makeshift sledge the dogs can pull to higher ground, where there's cell service. She texts her husband, Troy, a Vermont game warden, who arrives in a helicopter with help. Certain that her friend Homer is no killer, she plans to investigate, much to the horror of her mother. The dead man, Dr. Leon Vallance, had joined Homer to work on a new translation ofThe Odyssey. Then Troy and his Newfoundland tracker dog, Susie Bear, find the body of a missing man dead in a swamp in nearby Artemis Park, a large private game preserve stocked with exotic animals, including dangerous wild boar, run by and for the wealthy. This death attracts interest from both the government and Mercy, who thinks clues can be found inThe Odyssey. She becomes a target while heavily pregnant, with only Elvis and her young cousin for support in a wild chase, as she seeks to escape a determined killer who's only part of a much bigger plot. Cerebral clues and high adventure combine in an exciting character-driven brain teaser.

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October 1, 2024
Looking forward to a visit with her hermitlike friend, Homer, the heavily pregnant former army MP Mercy Carr treks through the woods to Homer's remote cabin, only to find a dead man inside, with Homer nowhere to be found. Finally, Mercy and her highly trained Malinois, Elvis, discover Homer in the woods, badly injured and unable to remember what happened. Then another murder occurs at an exclusive, nearby hunting resort. Determined to find out whether the two murders are related, Mercy puts her own life--and that of her unborn child--in grave danger when she pushes for the truth and pays the price for the role she played in a fellow army off icer's punishment decades ago. Meanwhile, the arrival of her teenage cousin complicates matters. In less capable hands, the diversity of topics--the environment, the vagaries of New England weather, hunting, academia, Greek mythology, history, philosophy--might result in chaos, but Munier grounds the sometimesmeandering plot of her sixth Mercy Carr book (after Home at Night, 2023) in her charismatic lead characters, Mercy and her husband, Troy.

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