Dave Dotson and the Tragedy of the Woods

A beautiful girl. A pistol. A wound that doesn't add up.

Detective Dave Dotson has seen staged crime scenes before—but nothing quite like this. A young woman found dead in a Manhattan woodland, her clothing smoothed, her body arranged, a cheap revolver lying just out of reach. Every official says suicide. Dotson isn't so sure.

The deeper he digs, the darker it gets. Gabrielle Lawrence was nineteen years old, motherless, and fleeing a father whose grief rings hollow and whose tears never quite reach his eyes. She carried a love letter next to her heart. She had friends who knew more than they admitted. And the physician who signed her death notice was closer to her than anyone will say.

Dotson watches the lies stack up. A father who performs sorrow for an audience. A lawyer who whispers instructions between sobs. A woman who bought shoes for a girl who would be dead by morning. Every answer Dotson uncovers peels back to reveal another secret underneath, each one darker than the last.

Because Gabrielle Lawrence didn't just die. She was silenced.

Now Dotson races to expose the men who thought a lonely girl in the woods would never be missed—before they realize how wrong they were to let a detective near the body.

Can he name her killer before the truth is buried alongside her?