The Cold Case Dentist

About this book:

Dr. Julian Vance knows that teeth never lie. As Oakhaven's gentle family dentist by day and a razor-sharp forensic odontologist by night, he reads the biography of a life etched in enamel and gold—until a skull pulled from a centuries-old clay pit hands him a mystery that bites back. The victim carries a bullet in his brain, high-end dental work from a forgotten era, and a secret buried deeper than the grave: a microscopic platinum scroll hidden inside a root canal, coded with a land claim number that shouldn't exist.

From the damp forests of the Oregon Coast Range to the dusty archives of mid-century dental study clubs, Vance follows a trail of calcified clues—gold foil technique, fluorosis bands, a healed jaw fracture—that resurrects a man the world erased forty years ago. But every restoration he charts and every ledger he cracks open pulls him closer to a conspiracy rooted in timber money, buried deeds, and a killer who never stopped protecting what lies beneath the clay.

Atmospheric, meticulously crafted, and driven by a protagonist whose steady hands conceal a relentless mind, *The Cold Case Dentist* is a forensic thriller where the smallest evidence—a chipped canine, a tilted molar, a coil of foil—becomes the loudest witness. For fans of Kathy Reichs and Tana French, this is crime fiction with bite: smart, haunting, and impossible to put down.