Savage Malice
Kit Karson
Granite Mountain Press (2025)
ISBN: 979-8990056176
Reviewed by Demetria Head for Reader Views (08/2025)
It’s not that often that I find myself caring what happens to the characters in a story, but Savage Malice: A Sheriff Elliott Mystery by Kit Karson pulled me in such a way that I not only cared about what happened but who it happened to and why. This is book five in The Anderson Chronicles. While it can be read as a standalone, I have to warn you that you will want to backtrack to book one just to spend more time in Anderson.
In Savage Malice, readers are taken to an isolated moment in the mountains where a lone man is hiding in a prairie grass ghillie suit. He’s armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, a .44 magnum, and ready for something. But what happens to him, neither he nor readers can prepare themselves for. The story then shifts and settles into the steady rhythm of Peter Elliott’s daily life in Anderson, Montana. He’s the town’s Sheriff and has a German Shepherd named Zack.
One of the things I love about Kit Karson is her ability to let a story breathe. Readers get to linger in Dixie’s Diner and smell the cinnamon rolls, or eavesdrop on the chatter going on in the neighborhood right before they’re jolted into an investigation. The quiet scenes in between the bigger picture are not filler at all, but Kit Karson allows readers to get to know and understand the people in the town Sheriff Peter Elliott swore to protect. That way, the stakes feel more personal to readers by the time tensions flare over suspicious poisonings, missing locals who turn up dead, or livestock deaths.
There are so many things about the way this story is told that just make you want to lean in. First, you’re reading about the everyday happenings in a small town where everyone knows your business, and the next minute, you feel like you’re riding shotgun in Peter’s truck to the poison patch to see what has Seth Geary so shaken. Then the investigation gets heavy because now Seth’s hired hand, Kenny Skinner, is found dead and in the most gruesome way. This investigation gets so deep, especially when Deputies Angus McLeod and Helen Ferguson come in to help.
Kit Karson does a great job painting this postcard town into a dangerous place that has people on edge, and the investigation just becomes layered. You can picture Peter’s frustration at moments, but readers also get to see this lawman in a very human and raw form; he’s navigating a tense interview one minute and accepting a home-cooked trout dinner the next.
I also love how real the procedural work seems with its slow-burn legwork in a rural community, the mounting deaths, the tufts of fur found at the scene, the visit to the Torrey Farm, and all of this is happening in between daily life, such as the brawl at the senior apartment and the UFO-cult traffic jam. Everything feels authentic. There’s no shock value, but the focus is actually on the human cost.
Savage Malice has that rugged Montana setting, a good balance of procedural mystery, and is definitely character-driven. It reminds me of Craig Johnson’s Longmire series or the Joe Pickett novels by C. J. Box. Readers who will most enjoy Savage Malice are those who like slower-paced, layered procedural mysteries filled with a great degree of tension. Kit Karson knows how to slowly turn the screws, and there is plenty of that here.