In deep woods behind gates with no-trespassing signs, Cassandra Patton Conover is about to become an outlaw. How could she know that trespassing after trout would bring her a murdered best friend, a reporter seeking extinct wolves, and enlistment in a fight for Maine’s forest? Then she finds tracks larger than any animal she knows and a mystery only wild animals can help her solve.

Before she can absorb the loss of her friend, Patton is hired to guide a surly reporter who suspects extinct wolves have returned to Maine, but the forest has too many agendas. A billionaire hopes wolves will become a save-the-forest strategy. A timber company plans to exterminate the pack. A game warden loyal to his Penobscot tribe, his attraction to Patton, and his law-enforcement life, has too many tough choices, and a black-ops mercenary rips open Patton’s wounded life so he can aim her at the wolves.

When gold wolf eyes issue a challenge at her tent door, Patton is drawn deeper into Shannon’s mysterious murder and the wolves’ fate. To find her friend’s killer, she must find and trust the pack. To save her dog, the wolves, and her own life, she must step outside the law, sacrifice her career, and embrace a wild world.

READ THE BEGINNING.

WHAT REVIEWERS SAY . . .

“. . . an environmental murder mystery, where the stakes are high and a vanishing world inspires violence.” Mystery Writers of America, national Helen McCloy award

“What exceptional, jaw-dropping TALENT. . . .  I found myself delighting in it, learning about this ‘world’ –Maine, the ravaging of the forest, the deer dying, the moist warmth from the moose nostrils, Moz trying to embrace her after finding Shannon’s body.” Women’s Fiction Writers Association “Rising Star Contest.”

“. . . a rare talent in indie literary fiction, delving into women’s issues in a way that rings so true . . . reminiscent of good contemporary American authors such as Joy Williams, Joanna Scott, and Cheryl Strayed”  SP Review

Deadly Trespass “. . . will propel you across the wildest of Maine’s terrain and into its coldest waters—in search of whispered wolves, possible murderers, odd bedfellows, greedy sons of bitches, and reasons for it all.” FAPA award winning author Meredith Marple

“. . . a beautiful book that brilliantly captures the battle to conserve Maine’s mythical woods . . . ” Ron Joseph, wildlife biologist and Down East Magazine author

“When wolves show up in Maine’s north woods, landowners and others launch a major, but secretive, effort to kill them. Neily’s novel has already won literary awards and is getting rave reviews. Add my review to that list; she’s had a lifelong passion for conservation and our native wildlife . . . ” The Maine Sportsman: reviewed by George Smith

“If you’ve never stepped in a pile of moose turds, if you’ve never caught a brook trout on a fly, if you’ve never been down a whitewater river, if you’ve never swatted so many blackflies off your face till you bleed, or seen the sun rise or set over the Northwoods, smelled a balsam fir …or if you’ve never seen a dead human body, you will in Neily’s mystery.

For decades I’ve lived and worked as a Registered Maine Guide in the same woods she writes about. Reading the book delivers the same smells and sights . . . and the dead body shows up on page two.

This novel is much more than a classic adventure mystery. It’s a prescient (and oh so timely) tale of corporate greed and the ways in which the “little people” . . . you know the ones who breath the air and drink the water, can do their part to halt the rape of one the “last best places in the Lower 48” through some incredibly ingenious and stunningly brilliant monkey wrenching. The book resurrects Edward Abbey from the desecration and despoiling of the American west and transplants him to the forests of Maine. Ed would joyfully sit on a rock by a trout stream and swill some brews with Neily. Ian Cameron, Owner of Penobscot Drift Boats