Callie Hauser has grudgingly returned to her isolated hometown of Pine Lakes as the newly instated Chief of Police. She has abandoned her fast paced life as a narcotics detective in the big city to help care for the person she loves most in the world – her friend Jane, who was badly injured in a hit and run some months before. Feeling restless and haunted by her return to the life she left behind as a teenager, and brimming with a thirst to prove she has earned her new title, Callie throws herself into her work as police chief. One night, she overhears talk of a 90’s cold case where a baby Jane Doe was found deceased on the side of the road in the woods. Callie decides to re-open the case, believing that things aren’t quite what they seem – what if something happened to the mother, and no one has been asking the right questions these past thirty years? Her investigation leads her to old rumors about a troubled teenage girl named Sabrina Riley, who disappeared around the same time Baby Doe was found.

The book then takes us back to 1990, where smart and obedient Annabelle Riley has become preoccupied with the new distance between herself and her wild and charming twin sister Sabrina. Sabrina has started seeing an older man she calls the Coyote, and Annabelle feels the weight of this relationship coming between the two of them. By the time winter comes around, both sisters have disappeared from Pine Lakes, never to be seen again.

As Callie is searching for answers, she discovers more secrets that cause her to reevaluate herself and the town she used to call home. Through alternating points of view, the reader is able to slowly uncover not only what happened to lead up to the crime in question, but how the impacts of the choices characters have made and the things they have concealed ripple out for generations.

Author Caitlin Mullen, winner of the 2021 Edgar Award for Best New Novel, does an excellent job at conveying an eerie and atmospheric feeling throughout the novel, where the town itself is as ominous and unnerving as the people within it. The town of Pine Lakes is located in the Pine Barrens, a 1.1 million acre forest in the state of New Jersey that has its own colored past. A quiet and remote place full of bogs and abandoned mining towns, it is also said to be the birthplace of the legendary Jersey Devil, who lurks within the forest with its unearthly screams, disturbing the locals, and serving as an omen of tragedy. This folktale is permeated throughout the narrative in clever ways.

As the mystery is solved and the culprit is made public, Heather also provides an insightful critique on the ways social media and true crime content dehumanizes the people involved and disregards the truth in favor of the more sensational and provocative narrative.

I would recommend this novel to any reader who enjoys slow burn mysteries with morally complex characters. If you enjoyed God of the Woods by Liz Moore or any of Tana French’s novels, you will definitely want to check out Heather by Caitlin Mullen.

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Review by Samantha Monk, Reference Librarian.