FBI Agent Corinne Swanson and consulting archaeologist Nora Kelly stumble upon a puzzling, partially unsolved mystery when two frat brothers seek refuge in a cave during a snowstorm and find two bodies. DEAD MOUNTAIN is the fourth Nora Kelly adventure from Doug Preston and Lincoln Child. Picking up the relationship from Diablo Mesa, Corinne is assigned to a new mentor, Clay Sharp, and they are dispatched to check out the bodies to determine if the cave is a Native American burial site or something more recent. When Clay and Corinne decide the bodies are prehistoric, Corinne suggests contacting Nora Kelly, Chief of Archeology, Santa Fe Archaeological Institute, to document the site and confirm the bones are prehistoric so they can notify NAGPRA-designated tribal custodian of the remains.

As Nora works in the cave, she moves to the back and finds two recent bodies. Now Clay mentions the Dead Mountain mystery from 2008. Nine hikers backpacked into the Manzano Mountains. When they did not return, search parties found their campsite and six of the group dead. The remaining three were never found--until now. With the two finally identified, only one camper is still missing, and Corrine seems determined to discover what happened to him.

The cave is near Kirtland Air Force Base, where nuclear weapons are stored. Clay tells Corinne that the hikers’ clothes tested positive for radioactive contamination, but that information was quickly classified and not part of the files. Corrie discovers that the last camper’s father had access to the base’s underground sanctuary and decides to focus the search for his body on the base’s storage facilities. While the FBI continues searching for answers to what happened, Nora challenges the local sheriff for his political posturing about the tribe’s rights to reclaim the prehistoric bodies and relocate them to sacred land.

Preston and Child conceive a plausible yet extreme mystery around the campers’ fate in the Manzano Mountains. And following the relationship between Nora and Corinne establishes an intense suspense-driven story that makes reading it an adventure. DEAD MOUNTAIN is not for the faint of heart and teases readers with a taste of what’s to come.