Blood Relay

A Novel

By: Devon Mihesuah

Narrated by: Bailey Frankenberg

In this richly layered debut thriller reminiscent of the real issue of missing and murdered Indigenous people, a badass Choctaw detective discovers an insidious plot against her reservation while investigating the disappearance of a beloved champion athlete.

Choctaw Detective Perry Antelope has been with her partner, Sophia Burns, for only six months. Perry is a seasoned investigator while the ex-Olympian shot putter Sophia is a former street-smart police officer. Together, they are an intrepid pair with an established record of success. But when Perry and Sophia are called to investigate the disappearance of Dels Billy, a beloved women’s Indian Horse Relay rider, they quickly realize that it’s not as cut-and-dry as anything they’ve faced before.

Piece by piece, they uncover unsettling connections between Dels’s disappearance and a series of unsolved abductions of women from Oklahoma reservations. But the perpetrator always seems to be one step ahead, and Perry soon finds herself—and her family—in the crosshairs of a ruthless killer. Despite her husband’s pleas for her to drop the case, Perry is determined to prevent Dels from becoming another statistic.

As the investigation deepens, Perry and Sophia follow a tangled web of clues that point to a close-to-home plot more chilling than they could have imagined. Torn between her family’s safety and her duty to her community, Perry must race against the clock, and across tribal Nations, to find Dels before her murderous abductor can carry out their sinister plan.

Critic reviews

“In Blood Relay, Choctaw Detective Perry Antelope investigates a carefully engineered crime that quickly ripples far beyond a single disappearance. With prose that’s both precise and unflinching, Devon Mihesuah delivers a harrowing and deeply necessary crime novel.”—Cynthia Pelayo, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Children of Chicago

“Indian Relay Races might be the most exciting thing happening in NDN country. Add in a case of #mmiw, and the reader is taken on a wild ride as Detective Perry Antelope partners with Sophia Burns to find Dels, a female Indian horse relay rider who has disappeared. Blood Relay is an action-packed novel for contemporary times featuring thrilling heroines.”—Marcie Rendon, author of Where They Last Saw Her

“[Devon Mihesuah’s] depiction of Native life is full of distinctive personalities who will hold readers’ attention, and her visceral fight scenes have a grittier, more lived-in edge than those in the average cop novel . . . a satisfying, deeply felt, and uncomfortably relevant crime story.”—Publishers Weekly

Real people with real life

I Really enjoyed this book and the interactions. Would love more books with Perry Antelope.