Noah Mercer is a mining consultant with a background in geology. Give him a remote site to assess, and he has useful questions about the ground, the roads, and what it will take to get people and equipment where they need to go.
Ask him to take responsibility for his family’s investigation, and things become less straightforward.
Noah takes the lead in The Lost Claim, the second Mercer Files book, releasing September 29. He is already working in Australia when a connection to the Mercer family’s past brings him to Lori Callahan.
Experience that matters outside an office
Noah’s strengths are practical. He understands mining sites and the planning that remote work requires. Distance means fuel and water. A road is useful only if it can be travelled. Equipment needs to function when help may be a long way off.
That experience gives him a way to assess the trouble ahead. It also has limits. Noah can’t settle a disputed claim by knowing the terrain, and he doesn’t arrive with the authority to make other people cooperate.
Lori has her own reasons to keep going
Lori works with mining records. An altered date in the files points to a claim belonging to her family, while Noah brings a receipt connecting that ground to his own family’s loss.
She has knowledge he needs, along with a personal stake in correcting what happened. For Noah, helping her means deciding how much of this fight he is willing to make his own. Assessing a problem and leaving is easier when nobody you care about has to live with the consequences.
The Lost Claim offers a complete case in the Australian Outback and can be read on its own. Readers following the Mercer Files will also see the wider family investigation continue.
You can preorder The Lost Claim for September 29. For release updates and reader extras, join my newsletter here.
Do you enjoy suspense heroes whose most useful skills come from their everyday work?