Northwoods by Amy Pease

Eli North has hit rock bottom. He is drinking too much. He has nightmares about and continued trauma from his service in Afghanistan. He works as a deputy in the local police department, where his mother Marge is the sheriff. One night, while on duty and drunk, he finds local teenager Ben Sharpe dead.  Also, Ben's friend Caitlin Wallace has gone missing. In the northwoods Wisconsin resort town of Shaky Lake, the police operate on a very limited budget, so Marge, Eli, and their two fellow officers finds themselves working with Chicago-based FBI agent Alyssa Mason. In her debut novel, Pease writes a story with a great sense of place, interesting characters, and a mystery that has the reader guessing until the end. I hope we see more of Eli North or at least another book by the author. A great read-alike title would be The Distant Dead by Heather Young.