Not the Faintest Trace

The war is over but his fight is just beginning.

New Zealand, 1877: Fear haunts a small Scandinavian settlement near Palmerston, in the North Island of New Zealand. The children have spotted a troll lurking in the bush, a large man clutching a hatchet and carrying a bag over his shoulders, the kind of troll that steals small children away from their families; the women are afraid it's a bad man intent on harming them. Meanwhile, two teenaged boys are missing after crossing the river in search of illegal drinks. The inhabitants of the settlement, who have sailed from Schleswig to escape the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, can't get the police to take their fears seriously.

When the settlers ask Sergeant Frank Hardy, once a sharpshooter with the 57th Regiment, to search for the boys, he's not interested. He misses his old life and is bored with his new life as a mail coach driver, but looking for the bodies of two drowned boys is not the excitement he craves.

Then he recalls his brother who went missing a decade ago after crossing a different river, and he changes his mind. But as he begins his search, an event from his army days resurfaces, and his danger increases. And now he has a young woman to protect: the attractive cousin of the missing boys, who assigns herself the task of helping him search.

Set in the picturesque New Zealand countryside, Not the Faintest Trace, a gripping mystery with a touch of romance, is the first of eight books in The Sergeant Frank Hardy Mystery series. Based partly on a true family story of two young men who crossed a river and disappeared, and partly on a little known but brutal atrocity, this book, as well as the entire series, is a product of the author's imagination.