Dennis Lehane meets Megan Miranda in this “dark beauty of a novel” (William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author) 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 … 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.
With “striking prose, engaging characters, and a searing story of crimes rooted in the heartland,” Bad Axe County is a “darkly irresistible thriller” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) that you won’t be able to put down.
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If Joseph Conrad had really wanted to find the heart of darkness, he’d have looked in Bad Axe County. Lurking in the isolated coulees at the edge of the Mississippi River are some of the meanest, foulest, cruelest hearts imaginable, and John Galligan evokes them with all the intensity of a mad poet. But in county sheriff Heidi Kick, a woman chipped and broken on every edge, Galligan offers a righteous force in opposition. Set in a landscape of the salvage yards, two-bit taverns, and blink-and-you’ll miss-’em small towns of Wisconsin’s Driftless Area, “Bad Axe County” is a dark beauty of a novel, nothing less than a mythic conflict between flawed heroes and gargantuan evil. It’s not always an easy battle to watch, but I guarantee you won’t be able to look away.
From the start of this book, I couldn’t put it down. Raw realism and heinous evil meets a force of nature. Heidi Kick is a female advocate for change in a patriarchic community that has become blind to wickedness. As the newly deputized Sherriff, Kick is about to blow the roof off their “boy’s club.”
I can’t wait to read more from John Galligan.
From the start of this book, I couldn’t put it down. Heidi Kick is a female advocate for change in a patriarchic community. As the newly deputized Sherriff, she is about to blow the roof off their “boy’s club.”
I can’t wait to read more from John Galligan.
This is not the type of story I usually read but I really enjoyed it. Packed with colorful characters and places, the author led us through Heidi Kick’s search for a missing girl all while trying to uncover the truth about her parents murder twenty years prior.
Bad Axe County by John Galligan was a fast-paced dark mystery that will keep you captivated from start to finish. Heidi White, now Heidi Kick, is the interim sheriff in a town where she grew up and where her parents died, ruled a murder-suicide, but she never believed that. The men under her want her gone. Now she is not only trying to learn what really happened to her parents, but also searching for a missing girl that leads to so many more questions all while a storm is heading her way. This thriller deals with some very difficult subjects, including drugs, rape, sex trafficking and more. As the story unfolds we are shocked and will keep you riveted.
Happy reading!
There are things I like about this book and many others I don’t. I don’t like how Heidi went off pretty much on her own like a vendetta through much of this book. also didn’t like that Harley and Heidi were pretty much fighting most of this book or that Heidi never went home. I don’t think she should be sheriff the way she acted in this book. The book was also confusing as each chapter kept going to someone else talking and it was hard to keep track of everyone. Overall the story was okay though the missing girl is really not missing and there was a lot of holes in other things. Now that a lot of things were cleaned up in Bad Axe by the end of the story, maybe the next story would be better.
*I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.*