One Child Left Behind: An Old Horse Mystery

Old Horse is a curmudgeonly, sarcastic and highly intelligent seventh grade teacher in the rural north who supplements his salary by laying sidewalks in the summer. While tearing up one he had laid thirty years prior, he finds the bones of a child. But no child has ever been reported missing from Grace Haven. How could a child be dead for so long and no one miss him?

As a character, Horse is unlike other teachers at Grace Union (or anywhere), with a Sherlock Holmes intelligence and a tone deaf, blunt opinion about every student, parent and fellow teacher he encounters. Still, he cares for his students and seeks only the truth. In him, every reader will find a protagonist they can invest in. His best friend is the principal, John Wells, who does his best to watch his back, and he is joined by a new teaching partner, Penny, who grew up in the community.

"One Child Left Behind is a mystery driven by smart dialogue and a quickly moving plot, akin to Ian Rankin’s Rebus stories, Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Martin Beck series and Craig Johnson’s Longmire novels." --Jasper Clankin