Reviewed by Emily-Jane Hills Orford for Readers' Favorite

Detective Dylan Greene had just finished a case and was heading through Mississippi to see his girlfriend. Little did he know that a dead cell phone battery, an empty gas tank, and a horrendous rain storm would find him stranded in the very isolated outskirts of Tupelo. The detective looks for a house nearby where he might be able to get some assistance, or, at the very least, get inside out of the rain. He chances upon a very derelict house and, perhaps against his better judgement, asks for assistance. The woman of the house, Eileen, reluctantly lets Dylan inside, assures him he can stay until Monday when the gas stations will open again, and shows him to a spare room to spend the night. A bizarre and almost unbelievable series of events follows as the detective unwittingly finds himself literally thrown into his next murder case.

Jeremy G. Woods’ mystery novel, In Peril’s Way: A Detective Dylan Greene Mystery, takes the reader on a spooky and troubling adventure, all within one very isolated and desolate house. The bizarre series of events would not be complete without the weird and almost mad antagonist, or perhaps I should say antagonists. Is there one or are there two mad women living in the house? And is the body Dylan discovers really the husband to one and father to the other? And who is the hunter whose trophies line the walls? So many questions, so many unusual and strange happenings. There is a sense of unreality. If the body is Horace’s and he had been dead for a few months, as Eileen said in the first chapter, then wouldn’t the body have deteriorated somewhat? And perhaps even smell? The plot is an interesting mesh of tangents and inconsistencies, which perhaps add to the unreal quality of the mystery.