Hey! I’m querying my fifth book, “It Always Starts With a Body,” a 75k-word psychological thriller and mystery.
In the declining, sea-lashed industrial city of New Bourdot, Detective John Juno just wants two simple things—to be left alone to do his job and to get rid of the disembodied voice of a dead serial killer that follows him everywhere (simple right?). But when the severed hand of Ilsa Matherson, daughter of billionaire industrialist Sterling Matherson III, shows up in the New Bourdot Municipal Dump, along with a list of demands (go figure…people don’t like billionaires), Juno is saddled with a new idealistic young partner, Rachel Erikson. There is no shortage of suspects in a dark mystery that inevitably crashes into Juno’s personal life, leaving him with a choice—start listening to the voice, face his past, and let others in, or lose what remains of his sanity and let the girl die.
The intrigue of Mick Herron’s Sloughhouse books mixed with the otherworldly aspects of Rachel Emerson’s Shudder. I think the story has serious potential. The idea would be that each story has another companion voice that follows the protagonist. The next story is already planned and underway. Part of the fun for the reader is guessing whether Detective John Juno is insane, or whether the voice is something otherworldly.
Fan of Stephen King’s hardboiled stuff? Fan of Disco Elysium? Fan of China Mieville’s “The City and the City? Fan of True Detective? You’ll dig this.