Helen Rourke thought she had left death behind.

After retiring as a small-town mortician, Helen spends her days quietly—until a strange, cold, incense-like smell brushes past her in a grocery store aisle. It’s familiar. Frankincense. Myrrh. The scent she used during embalming. She dismisses it as memory… until she learns the man she smelled died that same night.

Soon, Helen notices the scent again—on neighbors, strangers, familiar faces at church. Each one dies days later. And every death points back to a single event the town’s tried to forget: the disastrous 1998 flood, and the boy who disappeared in it.

When her investigation leads her to an abandoned barn and a shallow grave filled with the missing boy’s belongings, Helen realizes the flood didn’t take him.

Someone else did.

And that someone has been killing ever since.

Now the scent appears at her own front door. Her teenage neighbor becomes the next target. And Helen—armed only with her experience, a notebook, and a strange ability she never asked for—must face a killer who’s been hiding in plain sight for nearly three decades.

A chilling, atmospheric thriller about secrets that refuse to stay buried, The Mortician is perfect for fans of Sharp Objects, The Dry, and Long Bright River.

Death has a smell.
And Helen Rourke is the only one who recognizes it.