Where There’s Smoke
Coldren County Book 2
Rachel Louise Adams
Minotaur Books
October 2026
Where There’s Smoke by Rachel Louise Adams can be read separately, but it will be helpful to read book one, No Rest for the Wicked, first. Reading these two books in order will provide an overview of the returning characters in this book since the storylines from the previous book are carried over.
The plot has Dolores Hawthorne divorced, trading her profession as a forensic pathologist for a job as a medical examiner, living in small-town Wisconsin to be closer to her family. At the same time, Dolores is still receiving threatening Halloween cards based on an incident that happened when she was a teen in the area. She has brought the case to the attention of law enforcement which is why she is being threatened. Many of these incidents are presented in book one. Dolores is an interesting character who is clearly dealing with damage from her past while still doing exceptional work. She is very intelligent and intuitive
FBI Agent Kate Butcher is a clever character and apparently had a backstory with Dolores as a classmate. Kate’s supervisor FBI Agent Paul Turner is also intelligent and capable.
Dolores is also dealing with murder victim Benedict Marcy II, beloved big business employer, owner of the Marcy’s Meats slaughterhouse. Then a local cop who was transporting evidence samples is killed and most of the evidence is missing. It will take the intelligence of Dolores, Paul, and Kate to collect enough evidence and follow the clues to discover what is really going on.
There are many nuanced characters who readers want to get to know better. The story has many contradictions, twists, and surprises.
Elise Cooper: How did you get the idea for the story?
Rachel Louise Adams: This is a sequel to the first book, No Rest for the Wicked. I started writing this series, Cauldron County books, when I was a PhD student and my research topic was slaughterhouse’s meat eating. I decided to set in Where There’s Smoke a murder happen in a slaughterhouse. I imagine in part because it was a topic that I was reading a lot of books and articles about it.
EC: What can you say about the first book? (The questions below will also refer to the first book.)
RLA: Readers don’t see the husband, Max in the first book. Dolores, one of the heroines is on a first date with him, and the first book takes place, six months before Where There’s Smoke. In that book, readers see how Dolores reacts to her trauma, how it impacted her relationships, her marriage, her way of growing up and how she’s also separating from all those mechanisms including being raped. In this book, she’s becoming a different person after the divorce, in a very pragmatic way. She’s on her way to becoming a different person in this second book. When we open the series, in No Rest for the Wicked, Dolores returns to Littleport Wisconsin, the town that she grew up in. Dolores’ rape is central to book one. She is confronting the things that she left behind and understanding that a lot of what she understood about her town, her family, their secrets and everything is not quite as she thought. There’s a series arc going on with the trial and everything she encountered. The full context of that is much more available in book one. And the first book was much more focused on Dolores’ brother Asher. So, in book two, I centered it on the relationship with Josie, her sister.
EC: How would you describe Dolores Diaz?
RLA: Vulnerable, likes to keep to herself, has a back history, a workaholic, from a wealthy family, and an overthinker. She keeps to herself in the sense that she’s certainly not a very social person and mostly married to her work. She’s more competent around dead bodies than living ones for sure.
EC: What was the role of Halloween?
RLA: There are Halloween cards, Halloween masks, and notes that are in blood. This really ties into No Rest for the Wicked. It’s a town that’s obsessed with Halloween and, they have a weird history of freak accidents and disasters and even violent crimes happening on this one day. And so, the town sort of built it into its ethos. The idea here is that this is the town where the only thing of significance that happens all year is Halloween. Dolores had a very brutal trauma that happens to her in her senior year of high school and it’s on Halloween. It was a core part of her identity and her role in the community with all that becomes very much tainted in horror and trauma. It’s a vivid trigger response that she gets around the holiday. It’s a kryptonite, basically.
EC: What about the FBI Agent, Kate Butcher?
RLA: She was a high school classmate with Dolores. She has good instincts. She’s a rookie in the FBI. In the first book, she was a cop. But at the end of the book, she’s really fed up with issues with her coworkers and not feeling that she has meaning and purpose. And so, she joins the FBI in that book. Technically, she used to be a law enforcement agent, but she never investigated violent crimes. She does not hate Dolores but does have displayed weird emotions and horror that she sort of blended into a lot of things. The memories come rolling in and they both sort of face what really happened that night in book one. Kate Butcher used to hate basically everyone.
EC: Are there similarities between Kate and Dolores?
RLA: Yes. Both are not people persons although one is ice and the other one is much more fire.
EC: How would you describe Kate’s partner FBI Agent Paul Turner?
RLA: Paul is direct, confident, and likes to flirt. He’s running from an issue rather than deflecting. Just as with the victim Benedict II who is found to have different facets and his personality is a little bit more complicated, so is Paul. He smokes, he eats what he wants, he does what he wants.
EC: What about the relationship between Paul and Dolores?
RLA: I don’t know that I’d call them friends yet. I think certainly they’re headed that way in the series. But for now, they’re working together. What’s interesting to me is they’re very different people and yet very similar in certain areas. And so, they react to one another in entertaining ways. If you take Dolores full spectrum, she’s in control, she’s very cold. She’s very much oriented toward restraint, whereas, he’s the kind of person who’s going to eat the last two cookies from a box. He is very much oriented toward immediate gratification and fun, and I think she would very much be planning before she does anything. Such as, what consequence is this going to have, not only tomorrow, but like in the next ten years, while I think he doesn’t overthink.
EC: So why did you have the voices in people’s heads?
RLA: Like this quote, where Kate’s mother’s voice is in her head “cheer up, Kathleen, you saved your partner. You’re a superstar. How about you enjoy your bed of roses for once in your life?” A lot of the characters had voices in their heads. That was from a purely pragmatic standpoint because it helps with a bit of context and it helps characterize, the different voices and characters. It’s the mother’s voice or the mother figure’s voice in their heads. And I imagine that sometimes, when I’m doing something, I’m going to imagine what a certain person would say about that, if they were right here. It’s something that I tend to do. And I guess I just put it into the book.
EC: Why did you label the chapter titles?
RLA: I almost didn’t. When I published the first book, I think it was in the last round of edits that I ended up adding the chapter titles. Honestly, I always loved when books had chapter titles and I don’t know, I guess I don’t see it happen all that often anymore. And what’s funny is that a lot of readers really enjoy it as well. So, I don’t know why it went out of style at a specific point, but I always liked it. I think it adds context and it’s a mini teaser. But it also can enable readers to look at the chapter in a different way. It’s a little bit of a plus.
EC: Next book?
RLA: I don’t have the definitive title at this moment, and I don’t know exactly when it will be published. I’m assuming spooky season, not 2027, but probably 2028. It will be the third Cauldron County book. The plot has a serial killer that starts striking the town. And there’s something about his MO. I’m from a small town, so I’m always really interested in what happens, and the impact on the community and how people react. All the characters will be back including Kate, Paul, Dolores, and her family.
THANK YOU!!
