The Evidence Room

This atmospheric and beautifully written police procedural is set in Florida where a murder of a young mother shook a small bayou town to its core. Twenty years later, the victim's daughter returns to the scene of the crime and learns that the tragedy of her past has very real consequences for her future. Everyone in Cooper's Bayou knows the story of Raylene Atchison, the local woman who was murdered on the banks of the bayou, and her daughter, Aurora, who was found on the steps of the mini-mart, alone. But when Aurora, who was raised far away from Cooper's Bayou, returns to Florida to settle her grandfather's estate, she learns that the suspect in her mother's murder was wrongly accused. Aurora meets Josh Hudson, a cop who has been put on administrative leave at the Evidence Room, a warehouse of dusty and forgotten items that could hold the key for solving Raylene's murder. Together, Josh and Aurora delve into the past and find that the answers they are seeking lie just below the surface of the bayou they thought they knew. Spanning decades of secrets and lies and featuring a setting that comes alive as a character in its own right, Cameron Harvey's THE EVIDENCE ROOM is a stunning debut mystery from a new literary talent.