Heron County
Mysteries
New Release
November 2026
Executioner's Psalms
When private investigator Erika Adams is assigned to find the missing son of a billionaire, it doesn't take long to discover that plenty of decent people had good reasons to want him dead.
Suspected of being a serial sexual predator, the billionaire's son left a trail of victims, shattered lives, and no shortage of enemies. Yet wealth sometimes lets extremely powerful men redefine the rules, and solving the case could earn Erika the influential ally she desperately needs to repair her unjustly derailed career.
Now needing to work alongside and simultaneously deceive the Sheriff of Heron County and a handful of his most trusted men, Erika discovers a county with a legal system in shambles and a web of long-hidden secrets reaching far beyond a single disappearance. As the investigation closes in on a killer, the full consequences of crossing the finish line may prove to be greater than she ever imagined. In the most difficult case of her life, will stopping a murderer be the worst crime of all?
Executioner's Psalms is the first novel in the Heron County Mysteries. A gripping blend of suspense, romance, humor, lust, and morally complex choices. Sometimes a slow burn. Sometimes almost cozy. Until it isn’t. This is Heron County.
About Parish Rivers
Parish Rivers has always had a deep appreciation for studying people and the very different ways they navigate the world around them. He believes humor is one of the keys to getting through life somewhat sane, and to recovering from the times you didn’t quite succeed at the sanity part.
After a start in life that provided an unpleasantly close look at how poverty, racism, disability, and institutional failures affect people, he enjoys throwing some less restrained characters into the mix and creating stories with more satisfying outcomes than the real world often provides. For him, stories are most intriguing when characters can no longer avoid the complexities of morality and the internal negotiations required when life presents them with only flawed options.
Economics, institutional failure, and the power imbalances created by disparities in wealth provide some of his favorite backdrops.
A longtime mystery reader, Rivers always wished he had a designated chair in Nero Wolfe’s office, somewhere to settle in and enjoy a beer. That affection for fictional places that become almost as familiar as the characters helped inspire Heron County: somewhere readers can return to, get to know the inhabitants, and feel increasingly at home—even when what those inhabitants are getting up to is decidedly less comfortable.
And since life is worth very little without humor, love, and friendship, those always play prominent roles too.