C. Matthew Smith

C. Matthew Smith writes literary suspense grounded in landscape, law, and contested ideas of home. His debut novel Twentymile begins when wildlife biologist Alex Lowe is found dead inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park. National Park Service investigator Tsula Walker, a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, doubts the apparent explanation and follows the case toward a historic homestead and a dangerous winter pursuit. The novel appeared from Latah Books in 2021, presenting it as both a thriller and a story about ownership, trespass, and inherited grievance. Smith brings an attorney’s attention to competing claims while keeping the park’s backcountry central to the action. His short fiction has also appeared in crime and noir outlets, and that experience shows in the novel’s controlled escalation. For readers, Twentymile offers more than a wilderness chase: it asks how public land, family history, and community memory can pull people toward sharply different versions of justice.