A Nicole Cobain Mystery Series

Dead bodies and bad cops make for a brutal Montana spring-and a small-town sheriff’s worst nightmare in the second thrilling installment of the Nicole Cobain mysteries.

It’s a glorious spring in Blue Mesa, Montana, but not all is well in paradise. The authorities have been waging war against drug traffickers who use “mules” to carry the dope and cash across the Canadian border. And murder gets thrown into the equation when sheriff Nicole Cobain is called to the lake to assist Border Patrol but finds their boat adrift and a dead man in the ice. When the police drag the lake looking for bodies, they recover a satchel containing money and drugs–a satchel marked with the Border Patrol seal.

The evidence points to corrupt elements within the Border Patrol who are involved in the drug trade. Then, another murder victim turns up–the brother of Frank, a Border Patrol agent who’s been trying to root out the bad agents.

Nicole suspects that the two missing agents may have been responsible for the theft of the money and drugs, but when one of them is found dead from a single gunshot wound, the trail suddenly grows cold. As the bodies pile up, Nicole begins to feel that she’s the only good guy on the scene–and on the brink of a terrible discovery that could shake the community to its core.

The brutal murder of a teenager and a deadly medical drama plunge a small-town sheriff into a vortex of treachery and greed in the debut novel of Emery Hayes’s A Nicole Cobain Mystery series.

First female sheriff of Toole County, Montana Nicole Cobain earned the position through mental and physical grit and when a young girl is found murdered on icy Lake Maria, every bit of it is tested. But what begins as a chase for the killer quickly unravels into a high stakes medical transaction with harrowing consequences.

Eight years ago, Nicole fled her fast-track position as a homicide detective with the Denver Police Department in an act of desperation to save both her son and herself. Answering a recruitment ad, she showed up in the foothills of Glacier National Park and was elected sheriff six years later. She has a measure of peace in her new surroundings, her son is thriving, and she has effectively distanced herself from her past. Until Benjamin Kris shows up again.

Benjamin is the father of Nicole’s son and a big-time charmer who has quickly scaled the crime ladder. He has a large clientele and is looking forward to a big pay day that lands him in Toole. But when it becomes clear he could be a suspect among several others in town with opportunity and motive, it’s up to Nicole to sift through the tangled threads to find the killer before they strike again.