Amy Pease invites readers back to Shaky Lake, Wisconsin, in this sequel to her debut, NORTHWOODS. WILDWOOD is another tale of corruption, addiction and murder that will have you asking why Shaky Lake has such a strangely high ratio of criminals to regular people.

When we left Eli North in NORTHWOODS, he had started to address his crippling PTSD from his time in Afghanistan, given up the bottle, and at last could call himself a real detective of the Shaky Lake police force, led by his mother, Marge, the sheriff.

As we reunite with Eli in WILDWOOD, it has been a year since he, Marge and FBI agent Alyssa Mason uncovered a terrifying drug, rehabilitation and addiction crime ring right in their small, picturesque town. Since then, Eli has started therapy, traded the bottle for a coffee mug (make that many, many mugs of coffee), and has even tried medication to help with his PTSD. With his truck officially branded with the police force logo, he finally can say that he’s starting to become the man he was always meant to be: someone who works hard, supports his family, and fights for those who cannot fight for themselves. He’s even learned to take a day off here and there. So when his phone lights up on one of his mandatory days of rest, he knows Marge has found something terrible.

"Pease effortlessly blends the gritty with the idyllic, the peace of small-town life with the suffocating darkness of its underbelly. But she takes her talent for character development even further.... Eli’s journey from the bottle to the detective badge is deeply satisfying..."

Marge’s call leads Eli to a trailer park off Bunker Lake, where a woman went to see her friend and instead discovered an unlocked door and a blood-covered bedroom. The missing individual is 24-year-old Trinity, and if the state of her trailer is any evidence --- tidy, filled with lots of health foods, and impersonal --- this was no normal attack. Trinity had been arrested for drugs in the past, but her trailer doesn’t indicate any active addiction. Besides, Shaky Lake has its share of riffraff, but Eli is far more accustomed to calls about DUIs and domestics.

But the bigger surprise awaits Eli and Marge outside. Alyssa stands with her partner, a man who calls himself Agent Adam Diaz, but whom Marge swiftly identifies as Andrew Doherty, assistant manager of the Green Lake Country Club, where the Norths previously uncovered a crime ring. Trinity, as it turns out, was a confidential informant, but not just any kind of informant.

After a series of strained, difficult conversations, it is revealed that Agent Diaz is in fact undercover, maintaining his day job as he meets with informants at night, all in an attempt to bust a counterfeit pill scheme. A street brand known as V-TAC has begun manufacturing fake Adderall, OxyContin and Xanax. But while their operation was once limited to Chicago, it has spread across northern Illinois and into Wisconsin, all the way into Shaky Lake.

In a controversial move, Diaz baited Trinity with a drug deal. He then asked her to become an informant on Charles Dawson, a high-profile lawyer known for representing healthcare facilities, but who recently also represented a major V-TAC dealer. The tie between V-TAC and the numerous rehabilitation facilities cropping up in Shaky Lake seems obvious, but what’s not so obvious is how and why Trinity was caught or where she is now…if she’s even alive.

The answer comes in alternating chapters as we are taken back a few months before Trinity’s bloody disappearance. A meticulous, crafty plotter, Pease writes from the young woman’s perspective as she attempts to get clean, enters a dangerous halfway house, and finds herself on the run yet again. While it’s obvious that there’s some connection between Trinity’s past and the V-TAC investigation taking hold of Shaky Lake, readers will be hard-pressed to guess at every twist, complication or shocking layer of corruption. With the investigation --- and the tension between Eli and Marge and their FBI counterparts --- looming, Eli must not only discover what happened to Trinity (and his own beloved Shaky Lake), but protect his sobriety at the same time, even as he uncovers horrifying, dangerous ties between the town he loves and the seedy underbelly that has insidiously taken hold of it.

If you thought you’d seen it all in NORTHWOODS, get ready. WILDWOOD will prove to you that the corruption Eli and Marge uncovered a year ago was nothing compared to the crime that has slowly grown and infested Shaky Lake. From phantom clinics (whatever you do, do not google this one late at night) to cryptocurrency, substance abuse and healthcare corruption on a scale you can’t even imagine, this book has it all. And a handsome antihero to boot!

When I reviewed NORTHWOODS, I wrote that it was “the kind of debut that readers dream of: the announcing of an exciting new talent and the promise that more is to come." It’s rare to be able to so publicly declare that you were right, but I am thrilled to have that chance with WILDWOOD. Once again, Pease effortlessly blends the gritty with the idyllic, the peace of small-town life with the suffocating darkness of its underbelly. But she takes her talent for character development even further. It would have been very easy for another author to write off Eli’s struggles as something that happened “in the past,” but Pease tenderly and gently coaxes him out of his addiction and into something even scarier: sobriety.

Eli’s journey from the bottle to the detective badge is deeply satisfying, and Pease is never afraid to shy away from the ugly truths: the way that Eli has turned to caffeine as a replacement, or his fear that taking his medication and appearing groggy will cause everyone to turn on him as a lost cause. It is this growth that makes his investigation into Trinity’s case even more scintillating, as he approaches every aspect of her bloody disappearance not just with an investigator’s eye, but with an addict’s heart. And that’s to say nothing of the main case here that has a ripped-from-the-headlines quality while still seeming fresh, original and uniquely tied to Shaky Lake, a setting so beautifully rendered that it may as well be considered a character at this point.

I’ll admit that I had no idea that a sequel to NORTHWOODS was being published. But if WILDWOOD is any indication that more is coming from the brilliant Amy Pease, then you can catch me anxiously refreshing her website hoping to see news about book three.