Blood Betrayal — Mike Thompson

The first installment of the Wolf Magnussen series--

Set in the peculiar Anderson Valley town of Booneville, nestled against the foothills of Northern California's Coastal Range -- a mystery unfolds as a series of family tragedies is revealed when Wolf Magnussen's nephew is found slain in the midst of a family hunting trip.

The boy's own father, Dimitri, a troubled former SAS commando suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, is the small-town sheriff's only suspect. He's also the focus of the FBI's investigation into the gruesome murders of three federal park rangers.

As the two law-enforcement agencies team up and unwittingly enlist the help of Dimitri's wife, brother, and both of his long-divorced parents, things begin to make sense in the most terrible way. The Magnussen family's complicated makeup is about to become more complicated, though. While everyone's doing their best to bring Dimitri in, or avoid being the next victim in his killing spree, the origin of Dimitri's PTSD comes into question when he's linked to a family tragedy more than two decades earlier.

When D's ex-commanding officer arrives from Britain, he'll join the broken family's transatlantic, heart-pounding and heart-wrenching tale -- 25 years in the making -- filled with telling scars, murder, forced confessions, vengeance, and suicide.

Rich and complex characters add to the stranger-than-fiction setting. Dimitri's polar-opposite brother, Wolf, narrates the story as he leads the reader through one surprise after another, and just when you think you've got it all figured out... you're wrong... and then you're wrong again.