How can you solve a crime if you’ve killed the prime suspect? Detective P.T. Marsh was a rising star on the police force of Mason Falls, Georgia—until his wife and young son were killed in an accident. Since that night, caught in a spiral of grief and booze, he’s lost the ability to see the line between smart moves and disastrous decisions. Such as when he decides to ’help out’ an exotic dancer by confronting her abusive boyfriend. When the next morning he gets called to the scene of his newest murder case, he is stunned to arrive at the house of a dead man, the very man he beat up the night before. He could swear the guy was alive when he left, but can he be sure? What he does know is that his fingerprints are all over the crime scene. But the trouble is only beginning. P.T. and his partner Remy begin to suspect the murder is connected to a local arson and lynching; two days earlier, the dead body of a black teenager was found in a burned-out field, a portion of a blackened rope around his neck—and P.T. realizes he might have killed the #1 suspect of this horrific crime. Amid rising racial tension and media scrutiny, P.T. uncovers something sinister at the heart of the boy’s murder—a conspiracy leading all the way back to the time of the Civil War. Risking everything to unravel the puzzle even as he fights off his own personal demons, P.T. races headlong toward an incendiary and life-altering showdown.

The author of The Good Detective delivers a gripping and atmospheric new novel in which a cop takes on a harrowing new case and confronts old personal demons. What if the one good thing you did in your life doomed you to die? A hard-nosed real estate baron is dead, and detectives P.T. Marsh and Remy Morgan learn there's a long list of suspects. Mason Falls, Georgia, may be a small town, but Ennis Fultz had filled it with professional rivals, angry neighbors, and a wronged ex-wife. And when Marsh realizes that this potential murder might be the least of his troubles, he begins to see what happens when ordinary people become capable of evil. As Marsh and Morgan dig into the case, it becomes clear that Fultz's death was not an isolated case of revenge. It may be part of a dark web of crimes connected to an accident that up-ended Marsh's life a couple years earlier—and that now threatens the life of a young child. Marsh veers dangerously off track as his search for clues becomes personal..and brings him to a place where a man's good deeds turn out to be more dangerous than his worst crimes.

An electrifying mystery featuring a troubled small-town police detective faced with three interwoven crimes that reveal sinister secrets about his community—and the deaths of his family, by the Edgar Award and Thriller Award shortlisted author whose novels have been described by the New York Times Book Review as "pretty much perfect." In the years since the mysterious deaths of his wife and child, P.T. Marsh, a police detective in the small Georgia town of Mason Falls, has faced demons—both professional and personal. But when he is called to the scene of a school shooting, the professional and personal become intertwined, and he suspects that whoever is behind the crime may be connected to his own family tragedy. As Marsh and his partner Remy investigate the shooting, they discover that it is far from straightforward, and their search for answers leads them to a conspiracy at the highest levels of local government—including within the police force. The stakes in the case become increasingly high, culminating in a showdown that has Marsh questioning everything he knows, and wondering if some secrets are better left undiscovered.