A Lonesome Place for Murder is the second book to feature Ethan Brand by award-winning Canadian-born author, Sam Wiebe, writing as Nolan Chase. Blaine Police Chief, Ethan Brand and his most senior officer, Brenda Lee Page are at the Steranko horse ranch to see a potential purchase when they make an accidental discovery: a tunnel, and therein, a body.

Ethan is mentally listing all that needs to be done to protect the scene, and which law enforcement agencies need to be involved due to the proximity to the Canadian border. It looks as though the male shooting victim in the tunnel has been there for a decade, and when the wallet in his pocket identifies him as Tyler Rash, Ethan puts Brenda Lee in charge of the investigation as his history with Tyler presents an impartiality issue.

The fatherless issue of a teen pregnancy, Ty came into Ethan’s life when they were both teens, when Ethan was a disappointment to his rabidly survivalist father. Jack Brand saw Ty as the kind of son he really wanted. Ty later lived with the Sterankos for a time. For Ethan, the case resurrects memories, many unhappy, of being bullied by both Ty and the father he couldn’t please, the man who went missing almost thirty years earlier.

At a meeting in Blaine’s Police HQ between representatives of the Washington State Patrol, the RCMP, the Border Patrol, ICE, the ADA, and DEA, many questions are raised, both about the tunnel and the victim. Although it stopped short of the border, the unfinished tunnel might have been intended to smuggle drugs, prescription pills, cigarettes or alcohol, cash, firearms and explosives, or for human trafficking.

Who built it? When attractive DEA agent Vonetta Briggs describes the likely builder as “Well-trained in wilderness survival, something of a loner, dangerous enough he can take care of himself, and proficient with explosives”, Ethan realises this perfectly describes Tyler Rash. Were Blaine’s McCandless family, known drug smugglers, also involved?

The more he considers the murder scene, the less Ethan is convinced that the victim is actually Tyler, whom he believes too mistrustful and too aware of his surroundings to end up shot in the back: does this then mean he is the killer?

As well as the usual demands on his time as Police Chief, Ethan has a pile of overdue Officer Fitness Reports to complete, and both the current mayor, Eldon Mooney, and his opponent in the upcoming election, City Councillor Arlene Six Crows (“not white, not rich, and not a man”), expect his support as candidate of choice, something that sees him as the unlikely host of a book club evening.

During the course of the investigation, Ethan is distracted by the separate attentions of two attractive women with whom it might be rather dangerous to get involved, while feeling heartbroken over the finality of his split with his ex. The harassment of Councillor Six Crows: campaign signs stolen, her car vandalised, is a concern, as is the letter bomb Ethan finds in his mailbox.

There’s quite a bit of smart deductive work by Ethan and his team, some of whom get injured in a melee. Before matters are eventually resolved, there is another tunnel, an explosion, and reinforcements choppered in. Ethan is spat on, insulted, caught in a snare, hunted down, shot at and threatened.

Ethan is an interesting protagonist, a lawman with integrity, insight and intelligence, and a few quirks that will endear him to the reader. In this instalment, he buys a horse, goes on a date, prevents a suicide, and has to start looking for new officers as two in whom he places his greatest trust are set to depart.

Chase again gives the reader cleverly-plotted crime fiction with a few twists and surprises, entertaining dialogue, a dramatic climax and a very satisfactory resolution. His characters can be wise and observant: Ethan’s former boss “Nothing’s ever really in your control”, while Ethan muses “You work so hard not to repeat the mistakes of your parents. Instead, you make all new mistakes. And you lose them just the same as your parents lost you.” Chase easily evokes his setting, Jerry Todd’s cover is striking, there is plenty of scope for further books in this location, and more of this cast would be most welcome.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books.

A moody atmospheric and topical procedural that while the second in a series will be just fine as a standalone. Chief of Police Ethan Brand has enough ghosts of his own and a challenging past (and present), He works well with his deputy Brenda despite their competition for his job. So when human remains are found that are believed to be those of Tyler and they turn out not to be, the hunt is on not only to identify the victim but also what happened. Equally importantly, they must deal with what is happening (no spoilers). Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Well drawn characters and a twisty mystery make this a good read.

A Lonesome Place for Murder by Nolan Chase
An Ethan Brand Mystery #2

~ Dark, gritty, immersive ~ Great addition to the series ~ Couldn’t put it down~

What I Liked:
* Ethan Brand: Police Chief, ex-Marine, wounded in battle, separated two years from his wife and two sons who live on the East Coast, cool, calm, lethal, thoughtful, intriguing, hooked - want to get to know him better and find out where life takes him
* The small-town community and all of the small town issues that crop up
* The police procedural aspects of the murder mystery and the way clues were unearthed
* Characters were believable and very human
* Watching Ethan deal with being police chief while also navigating being single, missing his family, dealing with loneliness, and the women that come into his life
* Learning more about Ethan’s backstory, father, a young man that lived with his family for a while, his military experience, book club, and more
* The mystery of who the bones in the tunnel were, the importance of tunnels in the story, and the link back to Ethan’s childhood
* Getting to know the supporting characters better
* The plot, pacing, setting, and writing – especially some of the twists toward the end
* That I cared about the outcome and the impact that it had on more than one character in the story
* That the mystery was solved and tied up with a bow – no cliffhanger
* All of it rally except…

What I didn’t like:
* Who and what I was meant not to like
* Thinking about nature vs nurture and how much of both impacted how some of the characters in this book turned out

Did I enjoy this book? Yes
Would I read more in this series? Yes

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars

The second Ethan Brand mystery has Ethan taking a look at his past. When he is looking at a horse to buy for his sons, the horse stumbles into a tunnel built on an isolated ranch. Exploring the tunnel leads to a body with a wallet giving the name of Tyler Rash.

Tyler had been taken in by Ethan's family when he was a boy. Ethan's dad Jack really bonded with Tyler since they were both outdoorsmen and survivalists. Finding what looks to be his body, Ethan is faced with his relationship with his father who disappeared into the wilderness when Ethan was a teenager.

But, when Chief Deputy Brenda Lee discovers that the body is not Tyler's, the mystery deepens. It makes Ethan wonder if Tyler is still alive out there somewhere. A visiting DEA Agent is also wondering if Tyler is still out there since the tunnel mirrors other smuggler's tunnels that she has investigated.

Ethan is also involved in the local race for mayor since he has had a bad relationship with the current mayor since firing his corrupt nephew and admires the woman who is running against him. Stolen campaign signs and harassment of the candidate opposing the mayor takes up some of his time too.

When a letter bomb is delivered to Ethan's house, he knows he's getting close to something but isn't sure exactly what.

This was an intriguing mystery. I really like Ethan Brand's character. He's a Vet who came home from Afghanistan with a prosthetic and oxy addiction but managed to straighten up to become the Sheriff. He's dealing with the fact that his wife left him and took his sons to Boston. He's had some relationships including one with a married woman who decided to go back to her husband. And he has a sort of relationship with Sissy McCandless who is running the biggest crime family in the area.

I liked the story and look forward to more in the series.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this eARC.

In A Lonesome Place for Murder, Nolan Chase doesn’t just deliver a mystery—he orchestrates a psychological symphony set against the haunting backdrop of rural isolation. This isn’t your average whodunit. It’s a meditation on solitude, memory, and the moral ambiguity that festers in forgotten corners of the American landscape.

Ethan Brand is not the kind of protagonist who solves puzzles with swagger. He’s a man worn thin by grief and guilt, navigating a case that feels less like a murder investigation and more like a reckoning. Chase crafts Brand with remarkable restraint—his silences speak louder than his interrogations, and his internal monologue is laced with philosophical weight. He’s not chasing justice; he’s chasing clarity in a world that resists it.

The titular “lonesome place” is more than scenery—it’s a psychological terrain. The small town, with its decaying barns, fog-choked woods, and whispers of old sins, becomes a living entity. Chase’s prose evokes a kind of gothic Americana, where every shadow seems to carry a secret. The isolation isn’t just geographical—it’s emotional, generational, and deeply personal.

Chase employs a slow-burn structure that rewards patience. The pacing is deliberate, almost meditative, allowing readers to sink into the atmosphere before the plot begins to twist. When the revelations come, they’re not explosive—they’re quietly devastating. The mystery unfolds like a memory being unearthed, piece by painful piece.

A Lonesome Place for Murder is a story about the cost of silence. The murder is merely the catalyst for exploring deeper questions: What do we owe the dead? What truths are we willing to bury to preserve the illusion of peace? Chase doesn’t offer easy answers. Instead, he invites readers to sit with discomfort, to examine the spaces between justice and forgiveness.

A Lonesome Place for Murder is a masterclass in mood and moral complexity. Nolan Chase doesn’t just write mysteries—he writes elegies for forgotten souls. This is a book for readers who crave depth over dazzle, and who understand that sometimes, the most lonesome places are the ones we carry inside.

Excellent thriller. I really enjoyed the setting and the characters. I hope this becomes a series! I would love to see more Ethan Brand!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this arc in exchange for an honest review!

I discovered this series last year and thought it sounded like my kind of story: small town Sheriff dealing with small town crime up on the border of WA and Canada. The MC, Sheriff Ethan Brand, was likeable enough character and Blaine WA seemed like a small town with some questionable elements that could make for a good story or two. I was hesitant to continue the series after the first installment, but I’m glad I did. I liked this second installment a lot more than the first one. Sometimes it takes more than one installment for a good series to take off.

The gangs all back for this one. Sheriff Ethan, who has his two sons for the summer, is looking to surprise them with a horse and asks his deputy, Brenda Lee, to come along and help him pick one out. Brenda Lee is second in command and was also Ethan’s opponent in the last election for Sheriff. Needless to say, Brenda Lee thinks she would have been a better Sheriff and likes to remind Ethan of that frequently. It’s while trying to catch a runaway horse in an empty field that Brenda Lee literally stumbles onto an underground tunnel when she crashes down into it and finds a corpse.

The book summary introduces the primary storyline of the dead body being Tyler Rash, a homeless kid that Ethan’s parents took in for a while when Ethan and Tyler were teenagers. There was some bad history between Ty and Ethan because Ethan’s dad, a hard-core survivalist, always favored Ty over Ethan and made it very clear that Ty was the son that he always wished for. Anyway, because of the personal connection to the victim, Ethan has to pass the case onto Brenda Lee, who is just a little too happy about and is just loving bossing Ethan around a little too much – at first. It’s not long before it becomes clear why Ethan became Sheriff and not Brenda Lee.

There was also kind of a secondary storyline surrounding the mayoral election that was coming up soon. The current mayor, Eldon Mooney, was an old, rich, conservative, corrupt, racist, misogynistic, jerk from the old boys club and Mooney’s opponent was Arlene Six Crows, a younger, progressive, city councilwoman, as well as a woman of color. Mooney didn’t like that Ethan, the Sheriff, was promoting and campaigning for Arlene and political tensions were rising in the small town of Blaine and Arlene was becoming a target.

Most of the story covers the present-day investigation, with some flashbacks to the past when Ty lived with Ethan and his family as well as after Ethan’s dad went missing and then again after Ethan came back from Afghanistan, broken and busted up (minus a foot) and grieving his mother’s recent death. Ty’s mother, who abandoned him when he was a teenager, is tracked down and appears to have had some contact with him over the years, after he was grown and on his own. Needless to say, she was a piece of work.

The continuing character development of Ethan and his officers was good. I enjoyed the odd and sometimes tenuous interactions between Ethan and Von, a Seattle DEA agent, who was assigned to work with Ethan and his team in the investigation of the tunnel for possible smuggling activities. Von was a bit of a bad@$$ character, my fave kind of female characters. She also became somewhat of a love interest for the single and lonely Sheriff. The pacing was steady, which was something I especially enjoyed more than the first installment that tended to drag a little too much for my liking. The storyline was interesting, especially after Ethan began to suspect that the scene was not what it seemed, based on what he knew and remembered about Ty. The writing was good too, I liked how Chase kept the characters, as well as myself, guessing until almost the ending.

I’m looking at an overall rating of 4.1 that I will be rounding down to a 4star review. I want to thank NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for sending me this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

#NetGalley #CrookedLaneBooks #ALonsomePlaceforMurder

A Lonesome Place for Murder: An Ethan Brand Mystery by Nolan Chase is the sequel to A Lonesome Place for Dying. It, like that first book, is a really good read. You could read this one first, if you wanted, but why do that as the series is a good one and should be read in order like all good series.

As this book begins, Chief of Police Ethan Brand and Deputy Brenda Lee Page are slogging it out as they hike through a pasture. The mission is to find an old man and a certain horse. Both work for the small town of Blaine, Washington, near the border with Canada. They might not be the ones even out there now except for the fact that Chief of Police Brand is thinking about buying the horse. He had an appointment to see the horse and brought Deputy Brenda Lee Page with him, on her day off, as support as she knows animals. Not that she knows much about horses.

Brand’s ex and the kids live in Boston now and the most recent visitation did not go as well as he would have hoped. Both of his sons during the summer visitation were too immersed in their electronic devices when they were not actively doing something. That is except for one afternoon when they were able to interact with a horse in its trailer. The Christmas visitation is coming up and Brand is thinking that maybe a horse would help things. He wants his young sons to be present in the world and understand that there are things that matter far more than chatting online and playing videogames. He is feeling a growing gap between his sons and himself and is having a hard time with the dawning realization that his ex and his sons aren’t going to come back home.

The muddy and wet pasture they are slogging through has a slope to it as it sits parallel to the Canadian border. It is where they were sent by the owner’s wife to go check on him as he is overdue for getting back to the house. The slope and the wet ground are working Brand’s surgically repaired left foot and causing him increasing pain as he climbs steadily higher up the slope. The man they are looking for is Mac Steranko. Once they finally the crest and can look down the other side, towards the border, they can see him sitting on the ground near a patch of disturbed ground.

The elderly Mr. Steranko is a tough man and lucky to be alive. He is a bit banged up as is the horse, Trim Reckoning. It is favoring a leg and is a bit spooked by the hole in the ground. Mr. Steranko explains that the horse stumbled hard because a patch of ground suddenly gave way under it.

Even more ground gives way when Brenda Lee starts poking around and accidentally causes a bigger collapse. One that dumps her several feet down into a hole that is now several feet long. In fact, this is not a hole, but a partial tunnel collapse.

Back a few years earlier, Brand was in the military. One of his duties in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan was clearing tunnels. The last thing he wants to do is go down in that tunnel. But, when Brenda Lee finds a body in there that has been there for quite some time, he doesn’t have a choice.

A body that soon means quite a lot to Ethan Brand in more ways than one.

What follows is another highly entertaining and complicated read in this great series. Not only do they have a murder to solve, local politics is heating up, his ex has plans that don’t involve him, and history is rearing its ugly head. Much is going on professionally and personally and Ethan Brand is a bit like the dogged prize fighter that takes body blow and head shot, one after another, with barely any time to breathe as he leans against the ropes. Backed in a corner every which way, all he can do is keep his head down, and keep dodging that fatal blow. Or that head shot as the case may be.

A Lonesome Place for Murder: An Ethan Brand Mystery by Nolan Chase is a mighty good read. Very much strongly recommended as it is well worth your time.


My digital ARC reading copy came from the publisher, Crooked Lane Books, through NetGalley, with no expectation of a review.


Kevin R. Tipple ©2025

A Lonesome Place for Murder is book 2 of an Ethan Brand mystery series. This was a dark fictional mystery book that kept me engaged! It had both likable and unlikable characters in it, a well rounded plot and kept me wanting more of this detective mystery! I didn’t want it to end. Even though I wanted more, this book was ended up well executed. The main character Ethan Brand is a likable character, so I understood why the author wrote a second book! I am hoping that there will be a third one coming out as well.

The horse that Ethan Brand thinks about buying comes across a smuggling tunnel that had been abandoned. Him and his lead investigator end up finding a dead body there and that’s when things get really scary! This body identification is someone that Ethan knew many years ago. As the story unfolds, there are twists and turns you don’t see coming! Sinister things start to happen to Ethan! It is about a smuggling operation! I highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys reading a great mystery with some thriller! Be sure to check out the trigger warnings before reading this book. I give this a 4 out of 5 star rating!

Thank you to NetGalley, author Nolan Chase and Crooked Lane Books for this digital advanced reader’s copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book is expected to be published on August 26, 2025!