Vivian Barz brings the most unusual and highly original protagonist Auntie M has read about in a long time to be one half of an investigating team in her thriller Forgotten Bones. With a strong storyline and two equally strong characters leading, this promises to be a the start of thrillers readers will be clamoring for.

A car accident leads to the discovery of a young boy’s buried body in small town California. But despite this body being decades old, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Soon FBI are soon swarming the town, unearthing multiple bodies in various stages of decomposition, and closing out the local police, including Susan Marlan, one of their officers. Dedicated, smart, and tenacious, Susan can’t let the thought of that little boy go, or the others as the numbers mount to double digits. Someone has been killing people for a very long time, most of them children. Frustrated by her own boss and the FBI, Susan takes it upon herself to do a bit of off the record investigating.

Meanwhile, Eric Evans is new to the area, starting work as a geology professor at the local community college. He knows no one in the area, has no friends or relatives near by, and right now he likes it that way. He’s running from his former life and marriage in Philadelphia, in the throes of a divorce from the wife who he discovered having an affair with his older brother.

As if that’s not enough to be dealing with, Eric is a schizophrenic who’s learned to take his medication and manage its side effects, until the day he starts to see a young boy in denim overalls.

The overall suspect for the killings is a pedophile recently released from prison. Not only are the bodies on his property, he disappeared the day the first boy’s body was found. What could be clearer?

As more and more bodies are found, what Eric thinks are hallucinations starat to increase, until there are physical things happening inside his house that lead him to suspect that little boy is trying to send him a message. But how can he get anyone to believe him?

When Susan’s path ovelaps Eric’s, an unlikely duo are formed as the two try to figure out the clues they are being given amid secrets held for decades. And can they do it in time to save themselves?

This is the first in a planned trilogy, and Auntie M won’t be surprised if Barz finds herself giving these two a series of their own beyond that. The contemporary romance writer (writing as Sloan Archer) has found an exhilarating way to combine a police procedural with a modern ghost story while illustrating how some people suffering from mental illness can lead almost-normal lives.