Sheriff’s detective Katrina “Hurricane” Williams confronts deep-rooted hate and greed in the Missouri Ozarks in this riveting police procedural…
What at first appears to be a brush fire in some undeveloped bottom land yields the charred remains of a young African-American man. As sheriff’s detective, Katrina Williams, conducts her inspection of the crime scene, she discovers broken headstones and disturbed open graves in a forgotten cemetery. 
As Katrina attempts to sort out a complex backwoods criminal network involving the Aryan Brotherhood, meth dealers, and the Ozarks Nightriders motorcycle gang, she is confronted by the sudden appearance of a person out of her own past who may be involved. And what seems like a clear-cut case of racially motivated murder is further complicated by rumors of hidden silver and dark family histories. To uncover the ugly truth, Katrina will need to dig up past crimes and shameful secrets that certain people would kill to keep buried . . .

I think Robert E Dunn should be much more widely read than he is. His books are dark, powerful and feel truthful. I started reading him with ‘The Sound Of Distant Engines’ (2020) his disturbingly feasible story of a near-future America run by the Christian Right and constantly at war with the rest of the world. Then I went to his back catalogue and found the Katrina Williams series, four books that tell the story of a woman who, having survived atrocities inflicted on her by her own side while serving in the Army in Iraq, returns to her home in the Ozarks and becomes a Sheriff’s Detective. 

The first two books, ‘A Living Grave‘ (2016) and ‘A Particular Darkness‘ (2017), were harrowing but compelling reads. Katrina Williams is a survivor but that doesn’t mean she’s doing well. The main emotion she’s capable of is anger. She’s an alcoholic. She has a reputation for violence and recklessness with her personal safety. She knows she’s broken and she’s not sure she can do anything about that. 

In the previous books, the Army and the Federal government have loomed large as sources of the bad things in Katrina’s life. In ‘A Dark Path‘ (2018), her trouble starts closer to home as she confronts white supremacists and drug-dealing biker gangs who have unexpected connections to her family that only she is unaware of. 

It was another stark, violent, gripping book with a plot wrapped around a good mystery and with Katrina’s struggle to fix herself, or at least not hurt the people she loves, at its heart. The characters in the novel are complicated. They are not now who they once were but they still carry their past with them. Katrina understands this but her own past has left her filled with a rage that she has difficulty containing. 

One of the things that calls me to this book, and the series as a whole, is that there are no easy answers except violence and violence always has a price.

I have only one more Katrina Williams book to go. I find myself reluctant to finish the series but I want to read more of Dunn’s work. His standalone novel ‘Dead Man’s Badge‘ is calling to me. 

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Robert E Dunn was an American author, originally from the Missouri Ozarks, who took up writing after a career in video and film production. 

He is the author of the four book series about Ozarks Sheriff  Katrina Williams, the horror novels, The Red Highway, Motorman and The Harrowing and the thriller Dead Man’s Badge.