The Buried Season by William Liu

When a reservoir drawdown exposes the remains of a young woman buried beneath years of sediment, cold-case investigator Daniel Mercer immediately sees something he cannot ignore.

The body was found only a few hundred yards from the site of another murder solved a decade earlier.

The similarities are disturbing.

Both victims were wrapped in blue tarps.

Both were bound with wire.

Both appear connected to the same isolated stretch of ground.

But one problem changes everything: the man convicted of the first murder was already behind bars when the second victim may have been buried.

Then forensic palynologist Mara Keene finds something even more dangerous.

Pollen preserved beneath the newly discovered body points to a late-winter burial. Archived evidence from the earlier murder shows the same seasonal signature, contradicting the prosecution's original timeline. The science suggests that a man serving life in prison may have been convicted on evidence that never proved what the jury thought it proved.

As Mercer reopens the case, the trail leads through missing forensic slides, questionable chain-of-custody records, buried laboratory findings, and decisions made by people whose careers now depend on the past staying closed.

With a judicial nomination approaching and the integrity of a state crime lab on the line, Mercer and Keene must separate scientific fact from convenient certainty before another truth disappears into the ground.

The Buried Season is a gripping forensic crime thriller and cold-case police procedural about wrongful conviction, hidden evidence, scientific truth, and the terrible consequences of a justice system that stops asking questions too soon.