
Our fave New York Times bestselling author, Rachel Howzell Hall, is back with another California-based thriller complete with all the hallmarks of a thrilling crime story, complemented with extraneous weather factors that often feature in her books.
This crime thriller has all the fixings: an LAPD cop turned PI, a seaside California town, a dognapper, and a mysteriously turned up body. What more could you ask for?
In ‘Fog and Fury’ (May 13, Thomas & Mercer), after ten years on the force, LAPD cop Sonny Rush relocates with her elderly mother to peaceful Haven, California, to join her godfather’s burgeoning PI business. What crimes could possibly happen in a town nicknamed “Mayberry by the Sea”? Sonny’s first case: find Figgy, a missing goldendoodle last seen sporting a Versace collar. At least scouting out a dognapper gives Sonny a chance to get to know her new neighbors.
Forty-eight hours in town and Figgy’s disappearance entangles Sonny in an unwelcome reunion with her ex, one of Haven’s wealthiest citizens. And when the body of a teenage boy is found along a popular hiking trail, Sonny is drawn into a web of strange beyond anything she ever saw in LA. Then comes a local’s warning: question everything. Haven hides secrets that could destroy its idyllic facade. Or destroy Sonny first.
We were fortunate, once again, to feature an excerpt from ‘Fog and Fury’, which you can dive into below, before pre-ordering your copy. Scroll below to get hooked!

The fog kept me blind.
My scalp prickled with worry-sweat as I crept along Pearl Way, the least twisty road in Haven, with the headlights of FaB, my 1970 Ford Bronco, pushing through the mist only to find more mist, driving to my first day as a private investigator in a town of one thousand people, terrified that I’d end up warped and wrapped around a redwood tree. I’d crept through fog before—and in the same truck with the same headlights—but that was in Los Angeles, more than five hundred miles south of here. Here in Haven, I could’ve driven off a cliff, hit a deer, or slammed into a logging truck. I’d have never seen my end come.
Yeah, I may just die here.
Too early in the day to be thinking such thoughts but this fog and this highway . . .
Weather was making me hyperbolic.
At the same time . . . Was it so strange that a woman who’d chased a homicidal rapist into the fog and come out of that fog alive but with a bullet in her shoulder was acting a little fidgety?
In the last two years, I’d clenched FaB’s mahogany-wood steering wheel so tight, my hands had damn near whittled the wheel into an embroidering hoop.
“Stress,” Dr. Tess Molina had diagnosed.
“Hell yeah,” I’d said.
“It’s Los Angeles,” she’d added.
“The fuck it ain’t,” I’d said then. Because there I was, driving through a town three square miles big—ocean on one side, forests on the other—still clenching.
My cell phone buzzed from the cup holder, but I didn’t take my eyes off the road, not until I stopped at one of the seven traffic signals in Haven.
You starting today?
A million years to drive a mile?
I tapped a response.
You want me there walking or riding in a pine box?
Fog getting to you?
Yeah
Take your time
Not like I was still a homicide detective rushing to a crime scene. Not like there was a cooling body waiting for me to figure out whodunit and why. Not like I was driving to notify a family that the worst thing that could ever happen had happened—and had happened to them. I no longer had to experience any of this, not anymore.
I dropped the phone back into the cup holder and looked to my left—no cars heading northbound on Highway 1—and to my right—no cars heading southbound. Except for the waves of fog, the two-lane highway looked clear, and if I wanted, I could’ve buzzed through that red light, easy peasy. Just my luck, though . . . Bam! T-boned by a train.
A thick cloud rolled around my gut, making me dizzy, but I couldn’t close my eyes. My breath grew shallow and fast as my eyes flicked at the rearview and side mirrors. Not that I 100 percent believed the Suarez family had followed me up here from Los Angeles. Not that I 100 percent believed their threats. You’ll never take another deep breath again. But 9 percent believing is a helluva lot, and I’d watched members of that clan drive slow circles around my car in parking lots and the streets around my apartment building. There was nothing stopping them from harvesting the power of fog to reap my breath for the lost breath of their loved one, Autumn.
The traffic signal turned green.
Weary of monster fog and an angry, grieving family hiding in it, I looked left and right again before spurring the Bronco through the intersection. Once I safely reached the other side of Highway 1, once I saw that no one had pulled up behind me, my damp hands relaxed.
Yeah, I may just die here . . .
Travel blogs had nicknamed this village “Mayberry by the Sea.” On my first trip, downtown Haven and Seaview Way, especially, had made me go “Aahhh,” and my eyebrows had crumpled, and I imagined living full-time in such a charming, walkable town. No buildings over three stories in Haven but plenty of craft stores, bookstores, real estate offices, art galleries, and boutiques that outfitted your inner Stevie Nicks or Jack Nicklaus.
No bare asses hung out in Haven, and nothing popped or dropped here, either, not with old couples shuffling to Roll-Roll-Roll-Your-Dough Diner over there, and over there, young parents posted at tables outside a coffee shop named Deegan’s with one leash clipped to their dogs and the other leash clipped to their toddlers. No twerking allowed in the Victorian-era buildings soon to be designated as National Historic Landmarks.
I rolled west on Seaview Way, and like a sheriff on her horse, I slipped into a parking space, stopping before my bumper tapped the polished wood rail. Made it. One more glance in the Bronco’s mirrors—still alone—and my hands finally released the wheel.
In front of me, through the windows of the repurposed Victorian with gray clapboards and white gingerbread trim, I spotted Ivan Poole at a bank of file cabinets with his sleeves rolled up and his lips and brows rolled down. Half Robert De Niro and half polar bear, Ivan was a former LAPD Missing Persons detective, now the sole proprietor of Poole Investigations. He was my godfather, and now he was my boss.
A plastic tub of office desk trinkets sat in the Bronco’s cargo area, stuffed with a framed picture of Ivan standing on my left and my father, Al, standing on my right, both men with an arm wrapped around my shoulders. They were my sword and shield. Once Dad died, though, my right side had been left vulnerable. That’s when the wolves started their hunt.

Rachel Howzell Hall is the New York Times bestselling author of ‘The Last One’; ‘What Fire Brings’; ‘What Never Happened’; ‘We Lie Here’; ‘These Toxic Things’; ‘And Now She’s Gone’; ‘They All Fall Down’; and, with James Patterson, ‘The Good Sister’, which was included in Patterson’s collection ‘The Family Lawyer’. A two-time Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist as well as an Anthony, Edgar, International Thriller Writers, and Lefty Award nominee, Rachel is also the author of ‘Land of Shadows’, ‘Skies of Ash’, ‘Trail of Echoes’, and ‘City of Saviors’ in the Detective Elouise Norton series. A past member of the board of directors for Mystery Writers of America, Rachel has been a featured writer on NPR’s acclaimed Crime in the City series and the National Endowment for the Arts weekly podcast; she has also served as a mentor in Pitch Wars and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. Rachel lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. For more information, visit www.rachelhowzell.com. You can also follow her on Instagram, Facebook and X(Twitter).