A delusional prison patient warns Dr. Brian Heiser, Marriage and Family Therapist, of enormous impending disaster. Dr. Heiser and his best friend, a lauded Forensic Psychologist, find themselves entangled in a 72-hour deadly race to stop an AI bill being fast-tracked through the Texas state legislature.
Under Vixen’s Mere is one of those novels that quietly gets under your skin and then refuses to leave.
From the opening pages, the prose immediately stood out to me. It’s spare without ever feeling sparse—clean, confident, and quietly assured. Dialogue and description are held in careful balance, each doing its work without calling attention to itself. Nothing strains for effect, and that sense of restraint builds trust early on, inviting the reader to settle in and follow where the story leads.
What makes this book especially satisfying is its sensory richness. The attention to detail is so precise you can practically smell the bread cooling on the racks, the sharpness of cheese, the damp stone after rain. It is comfort reading with substance: sunshine and laughter paired with the everyday complications life throws at us, and the quiet resilience required to meet them.
This is not a book about capital-H heroes. Instead, it centers on people who engage in small acts of service, kindness, and yes, heroism—not for recognition or glory, but because it was the right thing to do in the moment. These are stories of people showing up when it would have been easier not to.
The Locked Room is clever, cozy without being complacent, and deeply satisfying for puzzle-lovers. If you adore classic detective fiction but crave a fresh perspective, Harriet White deserves a place on your shelf—and very likely, in your reading rotation for a long while to come.
I wish I had read this entry BEFORE I pulled on my big hoodie (a totally Canadian thing, I know), my thick trench coat and my black beret as I got ready to walk the dog at 2:15 a.m. It’s a lot later than that now, and I still can’t tuck in…been thinking about the cold and the impending arrival of wintry weather under a steel gray sky.
Thank you for validating the imagery that’s been cycling through my head. I think I’ll make some tea now.
Our pre-winter chill is fleeting, and here in Texas winter is like fall for you – around February we see ice for a day or two, maybe.
Tomorrow, it’s supposed to be back in the 80’s.
I don’t mind the chilly days, but the gray light makes me moody.