Looking for a page-turning mystery series with grit, legal procedure, and a bone-chilling atmosphere? Praised as unflinching and hailed for their authenticity, the Ozark Mysteries by Nancy Allen are just for you.
Written by a former Missouri Assistant Attorney General, this quartet of books, including The Code of the Hills, A Killing at the Creek, The Wages of Sin, and A Wolf in the Woods, follows Elsie Arnold, a young and tenacious prosecutor in the Ozarks, as she takes on some of the darkest cases in one of the hardest parts of the American Midwest, including everything from incest to human trafficking.
Nancy Allen’s fifteen years of hard-earned legal experience allows her to realistically convey the complexities of the American legal system with intrigue and finesse. And since Allen is an Ozark native, she captures the hills and hollers of her series' setting with harrowing precision.
Here’s everything you need to know about the Ozark Mysteries…
The Code of the Hills
When she’s assigned to a high-profile incest case in which a father has been accused of molesting his three daughters, Elsie Arnold is hungry for justice and doggedly determined to advance her career.
She’s also eager to subvert the Ozark tradition of shrouding taboo topics in the dark. However, that won’t fly with the locals, and soon the threats trickle in, reminding Elsie of how it’s meant to be in McCowan County, Missouri—in these hills, there are some things you simply don’t speak of.
Imagine a story like Winter’s Bone retold in the style of Alafair Burke: in this novel, Elsie’s ambition might kill her, but it’s the only hope for three young girls under the influence of a stubborn mother desperate to protect their abuser.
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A Killing at the Creek
After the first installment of this series, Elsie is lucky to still have her career. However, her ambition is insatiable, and this time around she hopes for a murder to cement her status as prosecutor in McCowan County, Missouri.
And sure enough, Elsie gets her wish—a body turns up under a local bridge, throat slit ear-to-ear. But it’s not so simple, especially not when the only suspect is a deeply disturbed fifteen-year-old boy.
Elsie’s life hangs in the balance once again when her investigation proves dangerous. Meanwhile, Madeleine Thompson, Elsie’s stubborn boss, insists there’s no way Elsie will be the first person to successfully prosecute a juvenile for first-degree murder in McCowan County.
In A Killing at the Creek, Elsie’s entire world is closing in on her, and it’s only made worse by the fact that she might put a kid behind bars before he even turns sixteen.
The Wages of Sin
In perhaps the darkest of the series, Elsie Arnold is back again, this time staring down the barrel of a case in which a pregnant woman is found beaten to death at a local trailer park and the only witness to the crime is the dead woman’s six-year-old daughter.
The Wages of Sin shines light on the dead-end lives and local meth trade in McCowan County, and yet, this time around, with a pregnant woman murdered, the locals don’t want to keep quiet. They want justice.
And they want it bad enough that Madeleine Thompson calls in the big guns to assist on the case, which means now the state’s attorney general’s office is encroaching on Elsie’s jurisdiction.
What follows—the battle to keep her case and ensure the safety of the young witness—proves to be Elsie’s toughest fight yet.
A Wolf in the Woods
When a young girl is found beaten at a local motel, Elsie tries to get the teen to open up about what happened to her. Then, suddenly, she disappears.
Convinced there’s more to the story, Elsie begins investigating even though she doesn’t have a case, and so it goes, everyone she tells dismisses her.
However, what she finds has much more sprawl than she ever could have imagined: A Wolf in the Woods is a fictional dive into the very real world of human trafficking in the American Midwest.
As more girls disappear, the wolf closes in, and for the first time in the series, Elsie finds herself the victim in her own investigation.
Lauded by heavy hitters of the crime world such as James Patterson and Alex Morwood, readers say A Wolf in the Woods is Nancy Allen at her best.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, Allen’s keen ability to weave narrative with court procedure makes for some of the best legal thrillers you’re ever going to get.
Allen is intentional about infusing local lore within her suspense, and the result is a living, breathing world. Despite the dark subject matter at hand, readers praise Allen for maintaining the humanity of her characters, instilling a sense of compassion in her pages, and for her ability to artfully infuse levity.
What’s great about the Ozark Mysteries is that you don’t have to have read the one before to enjoy the next. Regardless of where you pick up, you’re in for a read where setting is treated as character, suspense is king, and women are goddamn tough.
