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No Trail Back
(2026)(The first book in the Riley Marsh K-9 Search & Rescue Mystery series)
A novel by Mara Perry
A retired surveyor found frozen on a mountain he knew by heart.
A coroner who blames the cold.
A dog who says otherwise.
Riley Marsh came home to run a K-9 unit. That's true. It isn't why.
After eleven years as a wilderness paramedic in the Washington Cascades, Riley is three months back in Copper Falls, Montana, running the county's search-and-rescue team with Huck, a seventy-pound chocolate Lab who works on a single word and gets paid in a battered orange duck. Her lease is six months. Her boxes are still packed.
Then Gordy Sikes doesn't come back from his pre-dawn elk scout, and on the fifth day Huck finds him: seated against a deadfall on a cold north slope, hands folded, coffee thermos capped beside him. The coroner says hypothermia. The town mourns and moves on. The case is closed.
Riley Marsh disagrees.
A man who spent his whole life reading this ground doesn't get lost on it. Somebody wanted Copper Falls to believe he did.
The ruling is final, and Riley's hire is already the talk of the local diner. To reopen it, she and Sheriff Simon Brennan need something the cold can't explain, and the only one who seems to know where to look walks on four legs.
And the closer she gets to the truth about Gordy, the closer she gets to the night twelve years ago when her brother walked into these same mountains and never came back.
NO TRAIL BACK is the first book in the Riley Marsh K-9 Search & Rescue Mysteries, set in the Montana high country. For fans of Sophie Lyon's K-9 Search & Rescue Mysteries, Margaret Mizushima's Timber Creek novels, and Nevada Barr.
What readers will find:
A coroner who blames the cold.
A dog who says otherwise.
Riley Marsh came home to run a K-9 unit. That's true. It isn't why.
After eleven years as a wilderness paramedic in the Washington Cascades, Riley is three months back in Copper Falls, Montana, running the county's search-and-rescue team with Huck, a seventy-pound chocolate Lab who works on a single word and gets paid in a battered orange duck. Her lease is six months. Her boxes are still packed.
Then Gordy Sikes doesn't come back from his pre-dawn elk scout, and on the fifth day Huck finds him: seated against a deadfall on a cold north slope, hands folded, coffee thermos capped beside him. The coroner says hypothermia. The town mourns and moves on. The case is closed.
Riley Marsh disagrees.
A man who spent his whole life reading this ground doesn't get lost on it. Somebody wanted Copper Falls to believe he did.
The ruling is final, and Riley's hire is already the talk of the local diner. To reopen it, she and Sheriff Simon Brennan need something the cold can't explain, and the only one who seems to know where to look walks on four legs.
And the closer she gets to the truth about Gordy, the closer she gets to the night twelve years ago when her brother walked into these same mountains and never came back.
NO TRAIL BACK is the first book in the Riley Marsh K-9 Search & Rescue Mysteries, set in the Montana high country. For fans of Sophie Lyon's K-9 Search & Rescue Mysteries, Margaret Mizushima's Timber Creek novels, and Nevada Barr.
What readers will find:
- A complete standalone mystery and a clean entry into a long series
Real K-9 scent work: trailing, article search, and a dog who gets paid for bad news
Larch season in the Montana high country as a character, not a backdrop
A small town that feeds you before it asks you anything
A slow-burn sheriff and a standing coffee on Tuesdays
No graphic on-page violence. The crime is off-page; the aftermath is the story.
The dog always comes home.
If you love atmospheric mystery, a working dog who gets there first, and a woman finding her way home, one-click NO TRAIL BACK now and follow the dog.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Used availability for Mara Perry's No Trail Back