In Mineral Spirits, Sheriff Kip Edelson investigates the story behind a woman’s skeleton that a young boy stumbles across on a river bank. He gets a tip that her name was Chris and he knows her death was not accidental-but little else. As he traces Mineral County residents with similar names and seeks clues to who might have killed her and why, a story evolves that includes drug dealers, a shootout, an abandoned boy, and the sheriff’s own marital strains.