MYSTERY

The Night Woods

Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Mercy Carr, Bk. 6). Oct. 2024. 320p. ISBN 9781250887917. $29. M
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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.
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