Coffee is life...But with her tap water suddenly cut off, Sheriff Karen Okerlund Mehaffey has to go cold turkey—and increasingly thirsty—after a body is found floating in Lake Meer early on a lazy summer morning.As the boiling hot Dakota sun rises over the lake, Karen and her detective-uncle Marek Okerlund are greeted by a full-scale massacre...of fish. Setting that environmental mystery aside, they reluctantly determine the man in the lake wasn't likely the victim of an ac...

The trucker who’d hit a Wrong Way sign lay hunched over the wheels of his semi—with his brains blown to bits, a revolver in his hand. Leo Jurczewsky had long talked of killing himself. So when Sheriff Karen Mehaffey and Detective Marek Okerlund are called to the Reunion, South Dakota, exit ramp to investigate his death, they’re ready to wrap up the case.But it all goes wrong when the pathologist rules the gunshot wasn’t self-inflicted. So was it homicide—or a twisted form of assist...

It's dead time...With everything terminally frozen in the Dakotas, Sheriff Karen Okerlund Mehaffey gets called out on a subzero Saturday morning to the local funeral home to investigate the death of a financial consultant who lived by the mantra "time is money."Just getting to town is a challenge for a sleep-deprived Karen, made more difficult by an unexpected stowaway. But at least she and her detective-uncle Marek Okerlund dodge hosting a distant Swedish cousin who crashe...

It's not just the sun's rays beaming down...After losing a brutal election, Sheriff Karen Mehaffey and her uncle, Detective Marek Okerlund, are headed from South Dakota to New Mexico for a long delayed vacation and job hunt.Marek hopes to reunite with his old homicide partner in Albuquerque, while Karen looks to resume her former career as a dispatcher. But when Marek's young daughter goes unexpectedly mute when their plane lands in the city of her mother's death, all plans...

A crazy season...With the holidays just around the corner, the last thing Sheriff Karen Okerlund Mehaffey wants under her tree is a murder investigation. So when she and her detective-uncle Marek Okerlund discover two bodies—one freshly dead and one a skeleton—in an abandoned insane asylum in Eda County, South Dakota, she hopes both were natural deaths.The recent victim, a past administrator at the state mental hospital, had as many detractors as he held credentials—a man n...

This isn't your mother's Little House on the Prairie...Detective Marek Okerlund unknowingly passes by a dying man in a Dakota blizzard—and gets what he changed jobs to avoid: a homicide. Acting Sheriff Karen Mehaffey asks for a part-time detective to teach her the ropes and loses what she changed jobs to keep: peace in her family.Together, estranged detective and sheriff stand uneasily over the frozen body of Dale Hansen, operations manager at the local meat-packing plant. ...

Dreams can inspire, crush—and even kill.For Karen Mehaffey, going for the stars—the sheriff's stars—wasn't turning out to be a dream come true. Flood waters are rising along with the temperature, and the last thing she needs is a homicide. Detective Marek Okerlund, on the other hand, welcomes any distraction from the anniversary of his wife's death and from his mother-in-law's unannounced visit.When Karen calls back her old classmate Adam Van Eck to look after his ailing mo...

Instead of the Corps of Discovery...A corpse is discovered at Spirit Mound, a Lewis and Clark exploration site in South Dakota reputed to harbor evil spirits. Sheriff Karen Okerlund Mehaffey, newly married and wanting nothing more than to jet off on her honeymoon, must deal with a clash of white and Native cultures over an archaeological dig at the mound.To further depress Karen's spirits, the victim was a childhood friend of her inscrutable Native American deputy. Her and ...

The ties that bind—can kill.All’s quiet in Reunion, South Dakota, until word comes via horse and buggy: a killer is loose in the peaceful German Anabaptist community of Eder.Outsiders call them the Mock Brethren, who only wish to be left alone. Sheriff Karen Mehaffey wants to do just that—they shunned her mother. But when the patriarch, Elder Abraham Mock, is killed, she reluctantly answers the call, more afraid to find kin than a killer.Except, that is, for the dau...

Summer was for fun...A former star basketball player, Sheriff Karen Okerlund Mehaffey just wants to have fun watching the local girls' summer team play against an elite Dakota team that sports the country’s top uncommitted college recruit. True, life-changing scholarship offers are on the line, but no one expected that murder would be done.To make things even stickier, the talented and unfairly maligned daughter of Karen's boyfriend is vying for one of those scholarships, a...

It all comes to a head...In a quiet roadside ditch in Eda County, South Dakota, prairie roses have sprung up along with constructions cones—and a fractured old skull.Settling into her first year as elected sheriff, Karen Okerlund Mehaffey wants nothing more than a quiet little murder with no press, no mess, while she tackles the more difficult question of whether to purchase a new official vehicle or hire a new deputy.Her detective-uncle, Marek Okerlund, has his own...

If it bleeds, it leads.Poised to win her first contested election in Eda County, South Dakota, Sheriff Karen Mehaffey is broadsided by bad news.Not only does a hooligan deface a turbine in the county’s new wind farm, but Alyson Linderman, daughter of a Twin Cities media mogul, is found dead on the launch day of an electronics recycling center. Is it eco-terrorism in reverse or something more insidious?Branded as a bumbling pair of misfits, Karen and her det...