On a cold Minnesota January morning I sat at my desk with four files in front of me. It was time for the annual cold case review. As recently elected sheriff of Pearsal County and widow of the previous sheriff, I’d taken over the duty. The oldest case was an unknown child found in the early 1900s. The most recent, a young father. Each death had been considered a failure by the long line of Hammergren sheriffs. I didn’t have much faith that I could solve them, but maybe I could find something to go on.
Of the four, the most disturbing was the death of Junior Klein in a possible hunting accident. It had occurred when Will, my late husband and previous sheriff had been too ill to investigate it. As I read through the notes, I felt the investigation by a neighboring sheriff had been cursory with the assumption that it was simply a tragic accident during deer hunting season. But for me, knowing the people who lived in this rural county, if someone had fired off an accidental shot, they would have owned up to it.
My musings were interrupted by laughter outside my closed doors. Without knocking my chief deputy Jason walked in holding his phone. “Sheriff, you need to see this.”
He opened the newly designed page for the Pearsal County Sheriff’s Department. It featured a dancing cartoon female sheriff in a mini-skirt holding a gun. The banner announced that we “Project and Serve.” The eighteen-year-old designer who was the nephew of someone in the county came cheap—too cheap.
It was hard enough to prove that a woman could be the sheriff without a caricature of me displayed projecting. Instead of reviewing cold cases or dealing with the ongoing staffing issues, I spent the morning tracking down my eighteen-year-old designer to take down the site. As it turned out, that was the best that happened on that cold January because later I received a distress call about a missing teenager. Not only was she missing but she was the daughter of Junior Klein the man from my cold case.
As the day darkened into night I received a call about a cabin on fire with people inside. Little did I know on that day how my cold cases and the missing teenager would be linked. All I knew was that as sheriff I needed to get to the remote cabin before someone died.
And The Lake Will Take Them: A Sheriff Red Mystery, Book 1
Genre: Traditional Mystery
Release: March 2025
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Amazon | Bookshop.org
Chilling cold cases resurface as Sheriff Red Hammergren hunts for a missing teen, exposing the dark underbelly of a storm-bound Minnesota town.
Amid a fierce snowstorm sweeping across rural Minnesota, near the icy shores of Hammer Lake, an isolated cabin goes up in flames, leaving a critically injured high school drug dealer and a missing girl in its wake. The disappearance propels Sheriff Red Hammergren into action to find the troubled young girl, Missy Klein, the daughter of Junior Klein—the victim of an unsolved cold case years prior.
As Red peels back the layers of Missy’s vanishing, she uncovers a chilling nexus of drug trafficking pervading through her community with roots to the local high school. Unknown to Red, her investigations have roused a malevolent presence, a killer lurking within the storm…a killer that would do anything to stop the sheriff’s probing.
Red soon reveals a terrifying link between Missy’s peril and the unresolved cold cases she has tirelessly sought to solve. Engulfed in a battle against both the elements and time, Red must navigate her community’s shadowy corners and frozen woods to rescue Missy and halt the advances of a killer—all before the storm engulfs the truth in its icy grasp.
About the author
Linda Norlander is the author of the Sheriff Red Mysteries beginning with And The Lake Will Take Them. Additionally, she has two other mystery series—A Cabin by the Lake Mysteries and Liza and Mrs. Wilkens Mysteries. All are set in Minnesota. Norlander has published award winning short stories, op-ed pieces and short humor. Her most recent short story was featured in the Malice Domestic anthology Mystery Most Devious. Before taking up the pen to write murder mysteries, she worked in end-of-life care and hospice. Norlander resides in Seattle.
Linda can be reached at lindanorlander.com, on Facebook, and you can sign up for her newsletter HERE.