When illegal crab traps surface in the tideflats below the Glass Lodge, what begins as a wildlife violation becomes something far more dangerous.

Guests start checking out. Reservations disappear. And as a web of wildlife trafficking, bribery, and corruption that runs deeper than anyone expected begins to unravel, it becomes clear that someone is using the crisis as a weapon ? to destroy the Lodge, the community it has built, and the fragile ecology of the fjord that sustains them all.

For Cole Walker, the Lodge was a design project once ? a glass and cedar building perched above a deep glacial fjord where giant octopus hunt in the cold depths and orcas pass close enough to hear. But after five summers, it has become something he didn't expect: home. He's an observer ? someone who notices what people don't say, reads the fears that don't fit their stories, and finds the structural flaws in explanations that almost hold together.

As the stakes rise, Cole finds himself doing something he never expected: becoming the investigator nobody appointed ? trying to figure out who engineered the plan to bring it down before the people who built this place lose everything.

When Shapes Take Hold is the first novel in the Cascadia Mysteries series.

If you love Louise Penny's Three Pines series, the Cascadia Mysteries will feel like home.