Brimstone Hollow

 

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Buried in 24 hours. Why the rush?

A snake-handling preacher dies of a snake bite and gets buried within twenty-four hours. That's not a funeral. That's a cover-up.

Annie Gore is back. If you missed The Witch's Orchard last year, she's a former Air Force Special Investigator turned PI working out of Louisville, and she's exactly the kind of female detective I'm always hunting for and rarely find. This time her client is a woman who's been estranged from her father for twenty years. He was one of the last infamous snake-handling preachers in Appalachia. He's dead from a bite, he was in the ground inside a day, and his daughter wants to know who was in a hurry.

Sullivan is a ninth-generation Appalachian and it shows on every page. The gossip moves through that town faster than Annie does. The sulfur smell sits over the hollers the whole book. You can smell this thing.

The first book had witchy folklore running underneath it. This one doesn't lean on old stories. What's moving under the surface here is human and it's worse for it.

The writing is sharp. The pace rises and falls the way a real investigation does. Every townsperson Annie interviews is a full person, not a plot delivery device. It's a series book that reads perfectly well as a standalone, so don't let book two stop you.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Brimstone Hollow is out August 11. Thank you to Archer and Minotaur for the gifted ARC.

You can preorder a copy of Brimstone Hollow from Bookshop.org and help an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, check out my review of The Witch's Orchard. It's the first book in the Annie Gore series.

About the Author

Archer Sullivan is a ninth generation Appalachian. She's moved thirty-seven times and has lived everywhere from Monticello, Kentucky to Manhattan, New York and from Black Mountain, North Carolina to Beverly Hills, California. Her work has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Tough, Shotgun Honey, Reckon Review, Rock and a Hard Place, and The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2024. Follow Archer on Instagram for more news and information about her books.