It s late November along the shores of northern Lake Michigan. Deer season has been open for a few days and Thanksgiving is just around the corner. A local TV anchorwomen is returning home from an early morning yoga class with her young twin daughters. She stops at the end of her drive and climbs out of her car to collect the mail from the box. As she turns back toward her vehicle, the bullet from a high caliber weapon tears through her chest. In this third book in this series, Sheriff Ray Elkins confronts both the dark history of his own department and powerful and wealthy adversaries who try to control the direction and reach of his investigation.

7th in the Ray Elkins Thriller Series It's a warm summer evening in Cedar County. A storm is just beginning to roll onshore from Lake Michigan. In the auditorium of the Mission Point Summer Colony, the audience settles in for a performance of a stage adaptation of Agatha Christie's "Death at the Vicarage." By the first intermission the intense thunderstorm is overhead. The old auditorium reverberates to the violent tumult. Flashes of lightning cast eerie shadows through the rolling, heavily wooded landscape. Then the power fails. The building and surrounding countryside go black. When the electricity is restored, Ray Elkins, the Sheriff of Cedar County, is guided from his seat in the auditorium to the stage area. A member of the cast has been found fatally stabbed.  

Winter is starting to loosen its grip on Cedar County along the shores of northern Lake Michigan. The first hints of green are becoming visible on the edges of the receding snowpack. On the inland lakes, the layers of ice that started forming in late November and December are slowly subsiding. The search for morel mushrooms is still three or four weeks off. But this year there is other treasure to hunt. Vincent Fox, an octogenarian, has self-published a book, Al Capone’s Michigan: The Secret Lost Treasure. Following the descriptions in the book, some of the locals are beginning to scour the beaches with shovels and metal detectors. When Fox suddenly goes missing, Sheriff Ray Elkins and Detective Sue Lawrence are confronted by a complex web of fact and fiction to sort through, and along the way they discover new information to a decades old unsolved murder. Praise for Aaron Stander’s mysteries: This is a well-crafted, cerebral police procedural that should easily satisfy fans who’ve enjoyed reading about Elkins in other books. —Lansing State Journal Stander once again demonstrates his deep understanding of the geographic area and total fabric of northern Michigan. And he successfully melds this within a natural ability to tell a good yarn. —I Love a Mystery Newsletter With a protagonist as deep and textured as Ray Elkins and a backdrop as varied as this resort community, Stander has created a high-quality mystery series. —Foreword Magazine Stander’s Cedar County with its haunting sand dunes, woodlands, and Lake Michigan—alternately raging and serene—shape and shade every character on the canvas. —Northern Express

### Product Description It’s February along the shores of Northern Lake Michigan. A heavy blanket of snow has been building up in the woods since early November and the inland lakes have had a solid covering of ice since December. Shelf ice, stacked ten or fifteen feet in places, has been building on Lake Michigan for weeks. Sheriff Ray Elkins, responding to a late-night home invasion call, discovers the brutal murder of a local artist at her home deep in the woods. Elkins works to understand complex lives and relationships as he pursues a brilliant and brutal adversary. ### About the Author Aaron Stander is a writer, editor, book reviewer, host of a radio show about writers, and the author of four murder mysteries: Summer People, Color Tour, Deer Season, and Shelf Ice. He lives in northwest lower Michigan.

It's a tranquil October morning in northwest lower Michigan, a rural paradise of cherry orchards, blue lakes, and sandy shorelines. The serenity of the day -- and the season -- is shattered when an elderly woman walking her dogs along the beach stumbles upon the bodies of a brutally murdered couple. Sheriff Ray Elkins returns from his debut in the bestselling "Summer People" to track down the elusive killer of a vivacious and spirited young teacher. His search takes him into the dark side of an elite private school -- and into his own long-forgotten past. As Elkins unravels the mystery, the hunter becomes the hunted and one intrigue leads to another in this page-turner.