And so ends my chaotic run at the Cody Hoyt/Cassie Dewell series — right in the middle, when the serial killer known as The Lizard King is finally rendered extinct like his tyrannranous namesake. Here, Cassie is still a lead investigator with the sheriff’s department, but after luring the King into a trap, she’s devastated when he springs the trap with C4 — wiping out part of the sheriff’s department in an apparent suicide, and ending her career. A month after this, Cassie is approached by a woman she knows and told that a boy she rescued a few years ago, Kyle Westergaard, has evidently disappeared on the river. He and his friend decided to float down to Mississippi. The sheriff’s department hasn’t even stirred to look into what could have happened, and armed with cash Cassie is put on the case. She’s effectively an unlicensed private investigator, but one with connections. Imagine her surprise when her investigation of the boys makes her realize that the Lizard King may be alive and well — though, he’s seemingly abandoned his former patterns of behavior, like driving a big rig and kidnapping/abusing/killing prostitutes.

My chaotic reading order was prompted by the fact that I was reading this series at the same time as someone else at my library, and the books I wanted to read were sometimes not there; however, I couldn’t have ended this read with a better set of books. Back of Beyond introduced the character of Bull Mitchell, a retired outfitter who Cody Hoyt recruited to guide him into Yellowstone to find a potential serial killer who had for some reason decided to join a week-long expedition into the park. Mitchell reutrns here, albeit deafer and less polite, and because both Cassie and Bull knew Cody, his ghost rides with them to some extent. Cassie is even riding Cody’s former mount, Gipper. The drama here is two-fold, then three: we’re watching Cassie try to figure out where the LK is going and then find a solution to bringing him down for once and for all, but within the bounds of the law; we have viewpoint chapters where LK is abusing two captive women and engaging in some weird father-mentor relationship with Kyle, and then close to the end Cassie realizes that the same goonie boys who had ignored her claim that the LK was alive and well are shadowing her so they can pounce and gain glory for themselves. This is a problem not because Cassie wants the glory, but because goonie boys are goonie boys: they shoot women, children, and dogs first and offer explanations later.

Quotations

“Twelve is too young,” Kyle said.
“When you were the same age you shot two men,” Ben said.

“When his wife died he stopped coming in,” she said. “I haven’t seen him in probably a year and a half.”
“Oh. Do you have any idea where I could find him?”
The outdoor girl said, “This is a library. We can find anything.”

Cassie said, “Did you take your hearing aids out so you could talk nonstop and not answer my questions?”
“Let me tell you about the other ways the Park Service plays God in Yellowstone…” Bull began.