When Boy Scouts find a human skull in a car they pull from the bottom of Radar Grove Lagoon, it will prove to be only the first thread in a web of lies and corruption reaching to the highest corridors of power.

The investigation is assigned to Major Crimes Detective Jake Houser, whose mission to avenge the dead often pits him against institutional authority. Jake dives into the past and soon finds that powerful forces are destroying evidence and setting every branch of the criminal justice system against him. 

The case takes a dark and personal turn when Jake connects the murdered man to his uncle, political power broker Bull Warren, and the cover-up to his cousin, Sheriff Bev Warren.

How deeply were they involved? And how far is Jake willing to go to investigate his own family’s buried secrets?
As Jake closes in on a killer, his loyalties are put to the test. He’s about to learn just how committed he is to true justice.

And what it will cost him.

What Can’t Be True is the first book in the Jake Houser Mystery Series.

Things get personal for Detective Jake Houser when he investigates the brutal murder of his lifelong friend, Henry Fox. Jake soon learns that the handyman he thought he knew so well led a life filled with secrets, starting with a hundred-ounce silver bar he sold to a local coin dealer.

Everyone who learned about the silver wanted a piece of the action, from the silent partner in Henry’s new business, to his always-hard-up-for-cash ex-wife, to the two treasure hunters who come to town looking for a big score. And when Jake digs deeper, he understands why. Henry may have found more than just a few silver bars.

A lot more.

As Jake closes in on the killer—and the truth about what Henry found—the forces aligned against him become ever more desperate, leading to a showdown that will strip the façade from Henry’s life and force Jake to reevaluate his very definitions of friendship, and of family.

REVENGE HAS NEVER BEEN SO COMPLICATED.

Seven years ago Mark Siebert disappeared while on his paper route in downstate Mount Logan. The local police chief opened a missing person case while simultaneously labeling the boy a runaway and denying his detective’s request to involve the FBI. Two months later a transient drunk confessed to killing Mark and burying his body in a national forest.

Despite a massive hunt, Mark’s body was never found.

Now a man has approached Mark’s parents, claiming their son is alive and wants to come home. Could it be true? Or is it a con? The Sieberts ask Detective Jake Houser for help. They have one condition: that he keep the cops out of it.

Jake owes the Sieberts, so he accepts their terms.

He will wish he hadn’t.

Jake’s off-the-books investigation digs up the depraved and twisted secrets of powerful men with unlimited resources. Will these dangerous forces erase every link to the past before Jake can find the truth?

Is Mark Siebert still alive? Or is it all an elaborate con?

Detective Jake Houser’s search for a missing teenage girl has gone cold when a letter slipped to him through back channels upends everything. Could it be true that the missing girl was taken by the same man who killed two girls in 1982? A man protected by members of Jake’s own police department who then framed another man for those murders?

True crime writer Eddie Shaw’s career is fading when he gets the letter. He immediately sees a story that could put him back on top: corrupt cops, an innocent man in prison, and a killer on the loose. The missing girl ties the crimes of the past to the present and assure him of a best seller—if he can solve the case.

Both men investigate, each using his own methods and strengths. Will they find their way to the truth in time? Or will the dark forces protecting the past stop them?