The Long Way Home
(2027)(The tenth book in the Riley Marsh K-9 Search & Rescue Mystery series)
A novel by Mara Perry
Twelve years.
Ten searches.
One trail left, and it doesn't end in the Grayling Range.
Riley Marsh has spent her whole adult life learning to find people. She has one left.
The corridor that runs through the backcountry above Copper Falls has been moving things for fifteen years, and everyone who could have said so is dead, bought, or too frightened to sit down in front of a recorder. Riley has a dispatcher's shoebox of radio transcripts, a sheriff's rookie field notebook from 2014, a coded journal, a cut jacket strap, and a letter that was never mailed.
None of it is a case. All of it is a map.
The county says the thing is over — that the arrest failed, the commissioner retired to his ranch with his reputation mostly intact, and Copper Falls has a spring to get on with.
Riley Marsh disagrees.
Two and a half years back in Copper Falls, nine cases behind her, married in May and not moving anywhere ever again, Riley does the last search the way she has done every other one: grid it, work it, believe the dog. Huck is retired now, gray to the eyebrows, and comes anyway, because nobody has ever successfully told him not to. Juniper takes the lead.
The trail goes north. Out of the county. Out of the range.
To a cabin, and a name that isn't his.
THE LONG WAY HOME is the tenth and final book in the Riley Marsh K-9 Search & Rescue Mysteries, a cozy-adjacent K-9 procedural set in the Montana high country. Every question the series asked is answered here. For fans of Sophie Lyon's K-9 Search & Rescue Mysteries, Margaret Mizushima's Timber Creek novels, and Nevada Barr.
What readers will find:
Ten searches.
One trail left, and it doesn't end in the Grayling Range.
Riley Marsh has spent her whole adult life learning to find people. She has one left.
The corridor that runs through the backcountry above Copper Falls has been moving things for fifteen years, and everyone who could have said so is dead, bought, or too frightened to sit down in front of a recorder. Riley has a dispatcher's shoebox of radio transcripts, a sheriff's rookie field notebook from 2014, a coded journal, a cut jacket strap, and a letter that was never mailed.
None of it is a case. All of it is a map.
The county says the thing is over — that the arrest failed, the commissioner retired to his ranch with his reputation mostly intact, and Copper Falls has a spring to get on with.
Riley Marsh disagrees.
Two and a half years back in Copper Falls, nine cases behind her, married in May and not moving anywhere ever again, Riley does the last search the way she has done every other one: grid it, work it, believe the dog. Huck is retired now, gray to the eyebrows, and comes anyway, because nobody has ever successfully told him not to. Juniper takes the lead.
The trail goes north. Out of the county. Out of the range.
To a cabin, and a name that isn't his.
THE LONG WAY HOME is the tenth and final book in the Riley Marsh K-9 Search & Rescue Mysteries, a cozy-adjacent K-9 procedural set in the Montana high country. Every question the series asked is answered here. For fans of Sophie Lyon's K-9 Search & Rescue Mysteries, Margaret Mizushima's Timber Creek novels, and Nevada Barr.
What readers will find:
- The full resolution of the Danny Marsh arc — no hedge, no sequel bait
A last case, a last grid, a last search run by the whole town at once
A spring wedding, and the man who taught her scent work walking her down the aisle
A retired dog who is honored, thriving, and very much alive
No graphic on-page violence — the crime is off-page; the aftermath is the story
The dog always comes home.
Ten books, one town, one woman, and one chocolate Lab who never stopped working. One-click THE LONG WAY HOME and finish the trail.
Genre: Cozy Mystery