
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery
Series: Monster Hunter Mystery #3
Pages: 320
Published by Berkley on January 28, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
When a local fisherman is mauled to death, it seems like the only possible cause is a mythical creature in the latest puzzling entry in this USA Today bestselling series.
An ice fisherman is savagely mauled to death in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and an eyewitness claims the man was attacked by a hodag. There's just one problem with it's well known that the creature is not real and was created by a local hoaxer. So how could an imaginary creature be chomping on local sportsmen?
The suggestion that a hodag killed someone isn’t well received by the townsfolk because of its beloved ties to the town and the money it generates from tourist dollars. Due to this, people begin to suspect the witness is the real killer, especially when it’s discovered he has a tangled past with the victim.
The witness to the attack happens to be the nephew of Morgan Carter’s bookstore employee, Rita Bosworth, who convinces the professional cryptozoologist to travel to Wisconsin to prove that a hodag not only exists but killed the victim.
Clues may be hard to come by, but one thing's for something killed that man, and that something now has its eyes focused on Morgan.
My Review:
I picked this up because I liked the first book in the series, A Death in Door County, and I really enjoyed the second, Death in the Dark Woods. I started this third book hoping that the upward trend continued.
It didn’t. At least not for this reader. As always, your reading mileage may vary.
What mostly worked in the first book – and definitely worked in the second – was the way that bookstore owner, budding amateur detective and professional cryptozoologist Morgan Carter uses her actual professional credentials for hunting monsters to find actual monsters, even though – or especially because – the monster she starts out hunting is absolutely not the monster she finds.
In other words, she’s usually on the track of Bigfoot. Or something like Bigfoot. Or Nessie. Or in the case of the Beast of the North Woods, a Hodag. Now the Hodag is a proven hoax – because the person who supposedly captured one in 1893 eventually confessed to the deception.
Not that the town of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, which really does exist, hasn’t made plenty of hay (or at least tourist dollars) out of being the home of the Hodag. But no one expects to see a living, breathing beast in the area.

Except that someone claims they have, and that the beast they saw mauled a man to death in the woods. The local police are sure the dude who reported the body is attempting, badly, to cover up a murder. One that he committed himself, of course.
Morgan is 99% convinced he didn’t see a Hodag. Which doesn’t mean the guy is guilty of the murder. Even if the dead man seems to have been his lifelong rival if not outright enemy.
In Morgan’s previous adventures, she hasn’t found Bigfoot, or Nessie, or any other cryptids. She certainly doesn’t expect to find a Hodag in this case. That she actually DOES find one this time around is more than a bit of a surprise. That there are human monsters hiding in the shadows behind the cryptid is no surprise at all.
That her EvilEx™ seems to be messing with her head from the very beginning very nearly has Morgan running through the woods in terror LONG before the Hodag EVER makes the already messed-up scene in a way that threw this reader all the way out of a story that I was really hoping to love.
Escape Rating C: For this reader, the second book in this series, Death in the Dark Woods, was the one that hit the sweet spot. The first book went into just a bit too much detail about the flora and fauna of Door County, although that served as great background for just how Morgan approached her cryptid hunting. That first story also introduced the best character in the whole series and a very good boi, Morgan’s dog Newt. If I continue to read this series – and at the moment that issue is seriously in doubt – it’ll be to see how Newt is doing because he’s just awesome.
Unfortunately, that first book also introduced us, at least in absentia, to Morgan’s EvilEx™, David Johnson. David murdered her parents, framed her for his crime, disappeared into the wind and has been stalking her ever since. I have to confess that the stalker ex is one of my least favorite plot devices, so having him lurk over this particular entry in the series from not very far away at all just took me right out of the story. (I know this is a ‘me’ thing and may not be a ‘you’ thing and your mileage may vary, etc., etc., etc.)
This series, by its nature of starting out hunting mythical monsters, is always just a hair away from ‘jumping the shark’ and for me the frequent references to David Johnson – or whoever he really is – sent the whole thing right over the top of the shark and its wake.
And Morgan spends entirely too much of this story not thinking clearly, mostly because of David but not completely, that she seems to miss all the clues until its too late and she’s briefly in the frame for yet another murder she didn’t commit. Poor Newt has his work cut out for him this time around.
(I LOVE Newt. He’s a very good boi and don’t worry, he’s just fine throughout this story. It’s his human who keeps ending up in serious trouble.)
So this is the point where I’m going to admit that I’m seriously thinking of bailing on this series. I was hoping for something like Death in the Dark Woods, a cozy monster hunting mystery – as much of a contradiction in terms that should be but wasn’t. I needed a comfort read and that’s not what I got at all, so this was the wrong book at the wrong time and relied heavily on a plot device that makes me cringe. Color this reader disappointed.
I know I keep saying this, but it bears repeating, YOUR READING MILEAGE MAY VARY.