Forgotten Trail (National Parks Mystery #3) by Claire Kells #BookReview #MysteryThrillers #AdventureThrillers #Adventure #ColdCase #NationalParks #Nature @NetGalley @crookedlanebks

3 min readDec 14, 2023

Book Review

Ha, my favorite trio is back with another adventure thriller. Book # 3 in the National Parks mystery series that can be read as a standalone for the mystery. But I would urge you to read the series to understand the relationship dynamics developing between Harland and Huxley.

I have said this after reading the 2nd book, An Unforgiving Place that if the author Claire Kells plans to write these thrillers all centered around the National Parks then I’m all in to devour them. The author has an exceptional ability to make the place the central protagonist in the story so much that the characters find themselves facing the dangers of the terrain more than the human elements. The atmosphere and the natural setting of the story add to the thrill brilliantly.

Forgotten Trail has Hux, Harland, and Ollie, the cutie dog travelling to Pinnacles National Park to investigate a murder. In Book #2, the mystery was easily deciphered but here the author definitely upped the ante and delivers a stunning and unexpected culprit and brings in a cold case revelation at the end. The push and pull relationship developing between Hux and Harland has been toned down a bit, so I didn’t really feel any progress from the last two books, no worries, I’m more than willing to wait for that element to take its own sweet time.

If there’s anything I would have loved more in this developing series is the POV of Hux at least through his actions. We hear Harland and know her attraction towards Hux, there’s a slight jealousy angle in this but I still feel the actions showing his care and concern could have been amped up if his POV is not being given.

My Rating

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Book Blurb

In this third installment of Claire Kells’s thrilling National Park mystery series, Investigative Services Branch agent Felicity Harland ventures through volcanic wilderness to investigate a murder at a new hike-in lodge at Pinnacles National Park.

When a guest turns up dead at the newly opened Pinnacles Grand Hotel, ISB agent Felicity Harland finds herself summoned to a peculiar scene. A gentle breeze blows in from the balcony window, belying the violence of a man stabbed to death in his hotel room. It’s clear to Harland that this murder was personal, especially when the victim’s wife admits that she wanted him dead.

But Harland isn’t so sure that this was a domestic dispute gone bad. When she hears about the Park Service searching for a missing person out on the trails, she sets out with her partner, Ferdinand “Hux” Huxley, to see if the two cases are connected.

As Harland and Hux take on the rocky, exposed terrain of California’s ancient volcanic wonderland, they soon realize that the mystery at the Pinnacles Grand is not at all what it seems-and that a predator may be closing in.