Morgan Carteris a shop owner with a second career as a cryptozoologist. Her biology and zoology degrees, along with the decades she spent with her monster hunter parents and their adventures, has made her a smart, savvy stalker of creatures that may or may not actually exist. So when a couple of men were possibly killed by a Bigfoot near Lake Michigan, she was the person to go to for answers.

A local Warden with the Department of Natural Resources, a young woman named Charlie, contacted Morgan to investigate. Charlie tells Morgan all about the two men who were killed in the woods as well as couple of other local sightings. Charlie herself had seen a Bigfoot when she was a young teenager, out in the woods when she was hunting with her dad, so she had become the go-to person for the all the Bigfoot reports. But no one had been attacked by a Bigfoot before. This was new.

When Morgan saw the police reports, the Medical examiner’s notes, and the very graphic photos of the attacks, she could tell that something terrible had happened in the woods. But her scientific background meant that she was focused on finding evidence, not just relying on the rumors of Bigfoot and the stories that people told, since a lot of that was also tied into the tourist economy that kept so many of the local businesses running. And the more she looked, the more evidence Morgan compiled. It all started to add up. But did it add up to Bigfoot being a killer? And maybe more important, if the killer wasn’t Bigfoot, then who was it?

Death in the Dark Woods is the second book in Annelise Ryan’s Monster Hunter Mystery Series. In the first one, Morgan investigates a Loch Ness-type monster in Door County (and I’m not sure how I missed that one, as I love a Nessie, Believe me, it’s on my TBR now). In this second book, it’s all about Bigfoot, the truths and the lies, the rumors and the the potential scientific realities. And the truths in these woods are full of surprises, right to the end of this story.

I loved Death in the Dark Woods. I thought it was smart and fascinating, a well-rounded look at how we think about cryptids like Bigfoot, from the people who print the funny t-shirts and keep the rumors alive to bring in the tourists, to those whose sightings live in their memories for life, to those who exploit others in the name of finding the truth. And then, when Morgan figures out exactly what is happening in those dark woods, it made the story even more interesting. I love this book, and I am so looking forward to what Ryan comes up with next. I am all in on the Monster Hunter!

Egalleys for Death in the Dark Woods were provided by Berkley through NetGalley, with many thanks.