Dennis Lehane meets Megan Miranda in this tense, atmospheric thriller about the first female sheriff in rural Bad Axe County, Wisconsin, as she searches for a missing girl, battles local drug dealers, and seeks the truth about the death of her parents twenty years ago—all as a winter storm rages in her embattled community.
Fifteen years ago, Heidi White’s parents were shot to death on their Bad Axe County farm. The police declared it a murder-suicide and closed the case. But that night, Heidi found the one clue she knew could lead to the truth—if only the investigators would listen.
Now Heidi White is Heidi Kick, wife of local baseball legend Harley Kick and mother of three small children. She’s also the interim sheriff in Bad Axe. Half the county wants Heidi elected but the other half will do anything to keep her out of law enforcement. And as a deadly ice storm makes it way to Bad Axe, tensions rise and long-buried secrets climb to the surface.
As freezing rain washes out roads and rivers flood their banks, Heidi finds herself on the trail of a missing teenaged girl. Clues lead her down twisted paths to backwoods stag parties, derelict dairy farms, and the local salvage yard—where the body of a different teenage girl has been carefully hidden for a decade.
As the storm rages on, Heidi realizes that someone is planting clues for her to find, leading her to some unpleasant truths that point to the local baseball team and a legendary game her husband pitched years ago. With a murder to solve, a missing girl to save, and a monster to bring to justice, Heidi is on the cusp of shaking her community to its core—and finding out what really happened the night her parents died.
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“With occasional sharp shots of humor and hope amid the devastation, John Galligan’s rural crime thriller is a layered exploration of the ways that long-held secrets and shame can reach far into the future.”
— BookPage
“An exceptional novel…Kick is a remarkable character and this is a bad-axe book.”
— Milwaukee Journal Sentinel“Bad Axe County is the best thriller published this year or maybe this decade.”
— New York Journal of Books“Striking prose, engaging characters, and a searing story of crimes rooted in the heartland…a darkly irresistible thriller.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Gritty, brash, and totally gripping. John Galligan is a hell of a writer.”
— Real Book Spy“Fast-paced and utterly addictive. I loved Heidi kick, the Dairy-Queen-turned-sheriff. Long may she reign.”-
— Lori Rader-Day, Edgar Award–nominated authorBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
John Galligan is the author of several novels in the Fly Fishing mystery series and the Bad Axe County mysteries. He teaches writing in Madison, Wisconsin.
Arthur Morey has won three AudioFile Magazine “Best Of” Awards, and his work has garnered numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and placed him as a finalist for two Audie Awards. He has acted in a number of productions, both off Broadway in New York and off Loop in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. He has won awards for his fiction and drama, worked as an editor with several book publishers, and taught literature and writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed.