Cold Dark Night — Michele Bardsley

If you go into the forest at night, the Woodsman will get you and tie you up tight. He'll cut your throat and gut you good, so you better stay out of the Blackerby Woods...Sheriff Blue Hayes has grown up in the small town of Clever, Texas with the urban legend of the Woodsman, a tale that has been told around local campfires for at least a century. But when a teacher is found brutally murdered in the Blackerby Woods, and his body staged to look like a field-dressed deer, it appears as if the myth has come to life.To complicate matters, the victim is no innocent, and the crime seems motivated by revenge. As the unfortunate list of suspects grows, two more murders happen under Blue's watch. While Blue and her team investigate, they uncover one of the town's deepest, darkest secrets. A secret that goes back as far as twenty years.In her first major investigation as sheriff, Blue is tasked with debunking the fiction and finding the truth. Unfortunately, the evidence leads down a murky path into the past, and it's making Blue question everything she thought she knew about her close-knit community.Blue's beliefs about her friends and family are shattered the closer she gets to unmasking the Woodsman killer...and puts her own life in danger as she learns the horrific truth behind the murders.THE BLUE HAYES MYSTERY THRILLER SERIES1 - Hometown Homicide2 - Fear Thy Neighbor3 - Murder Comes to Town4 - A Crime to Remember5 - The Vanishing Women6 - Hell HouseGripping, heartstopping, page-turning serial killer crime fiction for readers who love Angela Marsons, Gregg Olsen, Lisa Regan, Mary Stone, Anne Frasier, Kendra Elliot, Minka Kent, and Robert Dugoni. You'll sleep with the lights on after devouring the first gripping, suspenseful book in the Sheriff Blue Hayes small town murder mystery series.