Dead Pile: Maggie Killian 4 — A What Doesn't Kill You Super Series Mystery

For fans of Janet Evanovich, C.J. Box, and Sandra Brown — the series finale, where the Bighorn Mountains claim another body and Maggie Killian has to decide, finally, whether Wyoming is home.

Maggie Killian is back on the Double S ranch in Wyoming, Hank Sibley is trying to tell her he loves her, and their pregnant draft horse Lily has escaped into the snow-covered pastures. When Louise the dog discovers a cowboy boot protruding from the ranch's dead pile — the frozen heap of things that don't survive Wyoming winters — it turns out to be Paco Lopez, their best ranch hand, with a knife through the base of his skull. The knife belongs to Andy Yoder, the Amish hand on Rumspringa who plays guitar on the porch and is the last person anyone would suspect.

The suspects multiply. Andy's volatile Amish father who follows him to Wyoming with a gun and an agenda. The local veterinarian whose wife was sleeping with Paco. A Cheyenne ranch hand with a criminal record and a connection to the murder victim no one knew about. Deputy Travis, who suspects Hank. Hank, who won't stop disappearing. And somewhere in the background, his knife found at a second crime scene in a courthouse parking lot.

Dead Pile is set entirely in Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains that author Pamela Fagan Hutchins knows from living there. A murder investigation across a Wyoming winter, a ranch fighting to survive a family crisis, and a relationship between Maggie and Hank that has been fifteen years in the making and is finally, dangerously close to being resolved.

She came to Wyoming for him. She stayed for the mountains. The mountains gave her a body in the dead pile, and a filly named Black Widow. Fair trade.

Grab Dead Pile for your adrenaline-fueled mystery fix and The Maggie Killian Prequels, next.

The Maggie Killian Series is Part 4 of Hutchins' What Doesn't Kill You Super Series.