The Deep Green
(2026)(The first book in the Pacific Northwest K-9 Mystery series)
A novel by Sophie Lyon
The forest knows what the satellites can’t see.
Kate Soren came home to start over.
After her years at Seattle’s Innocence Project ended in a loss she couldn’t carry alone, she drove east to Colorado, to a small mountain town called Elk Creek and a K-9 trainer named Gemma Hartley‑Reyes, and learned a new trade. Two years later, she’s back in Washington: the new K-9 search-and-rescue handler on the Olympic Peninsula, with a working-line German Shepherd named Scout and a rented cottage on the harbor.
Her first case is supposed to be simple.
Wildlife biologist Wren Bergstrom never came back from a fieldwork trip into the Hoh Rain Forest. The Park Service is treating it as a lost-hiker case. The local sheriff is treating it as a search-and-rescue priority. Kate is treating it as the case that will tell her whether she’s built for this work or whether she should pack the truck and drive back to the Rockies.
Then Scout alerts on something the satellites missed. Something Kate isn’t supposed to find. Something a third-generation Peninsula man named Callum Yorke has been hiding in the Hoh’s deepest drainage for twenty years.
Wren is alive. She’s been documenting her captor from inside.
And the rain forest, which has hidden everything, is finally ready to give it back.
THE DEEP GREEN is the first book in Sophie Lyon’s atmospheric Pacific Northwest K-9 Mysteries, a cozy-adjacent series following former Innocence Project attorney Kate Soren and her German Shepherd Scout as they build a search-and-rescue program from the ground up on the Olympic Peninsula. For fans of Margaret Mizushima’s Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries, Paula Munier’s Mercy & Elvis novels, and Dana Stabenow’s wilderness procedurals.
What readers will find:
Kate Soren came home to start over.
After her years at Seattle’s Innocence Project ended in a loss she couldn’t carry alone, she drove east to Colorado, to a small mountain town called Elk Creek and a K-9 trainer named Gemma Hartley‑Reyes, and learned a new trade. Two years later, she’s back in Washington: the new K-9 search-and-rescue handler on the Olympic Peninsula, with a working-line German Shepherd named Scout and a rented cottage on the harbor.
Her first case is supposed to be simple.
Wildlife biologist Wren Bergstrom never came back from a fieldwork trip into the Hoh Rain Forest. The Park Service is treating it as a lost-hiker case. The local sheriff is treating it as a search-and-rescue priority. Kate is treating it as the case that will tell her whether she’s built for this work or whether she should pack the truck and drive back to the Rockies.
Then Scout alerts on something the satellites missed. Something Kate isn’t supposed to find. Something a third-generation Peninsula man named Callum Yorke has been hiding in the Hoh’s deepest drainage for twenty years.
Wren is alive. She’s been documenting her captor from inside.
And the rain forest, which has hidden everything, is finally ready to give it back.
THE DEEP GREEN is the first book in Sophie Lyon’s atmospheric Pacific Northwest K-9 Mysteries, a cozy-adjacent series following former Innocence Project attorney Kate Soren and her German Shepherd Scout as they build a search-and-rescue program from the ground up on the Olympic Peninsula. For fans of Margaret Mizushima’s Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries, Paula Munier’s Mercy & Elvis novels, and Dana Stabenow’s wilderness procedurals.
What readers will find:
- A standalone mystery in a 24-book series, the perfect entry point
A quietly competent female protagonist who gets quieter under stress
Real K-9 search-and-rescue technique rendered authentically on the page
The Pacific Northwest as a co-protagonist, the Hoh Rain Forest comes alive
No graphic on-page violence, cozy contract honored throughout
The dog survives. Always.
If you’ve ever wanted a mystery that smells like cedar and rain, where the dog gets the best lines and the forest is a character, start here.
One-click THE DEEP GREEN now and step onto the Peninsula.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
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