Wildwood

Amy Pease’s sophomore novel confirms she’s not merely repeating the success of Northwoods but actively expanding her creative range. Wildwood marks the return of Sheriff Marge North, her battle-worn son Eli, and FBI agent Alyssa Mason. This time around, Shaky Lake is riddled with murder, drugs, explosions, and even a police-station heater giving up the ghost at the worst possible moment: a Wisconsin frost. The novel’s precision, clarity, and narrative confidence presents a new experience for contemporary crime fiction; one that moves with purpose and never wastes a beat. And on top of all that, Amy Pease keeps those pages a turnin’.

This is a confident thriller for the crime-fiction connoisseur. Wildwood shows Pease sharpening her craft while sidestepping every stale genre expectation.

Title: Wildwood (2026)
Author: Amy Pease
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Book jacket: A mother-son law enforcement team confront buried secrets in their small town as they work to expose a conspiracy that goes far beyond the tight-knit community.

Joe says: This is a confident thriller for the crime-fiction connoisseur. Wildwood shows Pease sharpening her craft while sidestepping every stale genre expectation.

Wildwood builds from Northwoods, but does so with a sequel’s ambition rather than a sequel’s baggage. Think Mad Max: Fury Road rather than season two of Strange New Worlds. Trinity Campanella arrives in Shaky Lake seeking rehabilitation and instead meets a violent end, her disappearance triggering a case that reunites Marge and Eli with Mason. What unfolds is a layered confrontation with healthcare fraud, cryptocurrency schemes, and the predators that thrive on people in crisis. Pease avoids convolution and instead creates momentum driven by character, consequence, and the uneasy silence of institutions looking the other way.

Despite a setup that sounds like something printed on the back of a mass-market paperback, Wildwood refuses the easy path. Pease threads together drug trade logistics, extradition snarls, childcare vulnerability, and billionaires weaponizing philanthropy, all without leaning on spectacle or cynicism. Each chapter lands with deliberate force without relying on cheap cliffhangers. The narrative’s complexity never overshadows its humanity.

Pease uses character progression with restraint and clarity. Marge and Eli return with recognizable baggage but are given room to grow in ways that feel earned. Eli, in particular, benefits from Pease’s refusal to turn trauma into a repetitive cycle of destructively cliche tropes. Eli actually gains positive momentum instead of falling back into soap-opera melodrama. Likewise, Agent Mason gets the same respect. No damsel in distress dependency, no forced romance subplot. Just a woman doing her job damn well.

Wildwood delivers a crime thriller with intelligence, rhythm, and structural grace. Pease doesn’t chase the sanitized polish of a Nelson DeMille novel or the nasty grit of James Ellroy. She works with a journalist’s pulse. Some chapters click together like a smiling school musical; others erupt with a chaotic, overlapping noise like that Christmas episode of The Bear. Pease manages both by playing a little Country in with her Rock n’Roll.

Wildwood is a strong, compelling read, and a clear signal that her voice in crime fiction is only getting stronger.