Read Between the Murders

When Detective Sloane Hollis arrives at a brutal homicide in Seattle, she expects another long night-until she finds a small black diary placed beside the victim, its pages filled with twelve detailed murder entries that haven't happened yet. Each page describes a future victim, a method, a location... and the final blank entry bears her name.

The killer calls himself The Author, a meticulous manipulator who treats murder as narrative art. Each killing mirrors the scenes in his diary-victims posed like paintings, crime scenes arranged like symbolic stories, and clues tailored specifically for Sloane. But the diary isn't static. As Sloane intervenes, its entries change. Lines rewrite themselves. Dates shift. The Author is crafting a living story, adapting each "chapter" to her choices.

The deeper Sloane digs, the more personal the case becomes. The Author knows intimate details about her past-her sister's unsolved murder, the nightmares she hides, even fragments of childhood memories she thought she'd buried. Then she discovers the diary originally belonged to her sister, connecting the killings to a truth Sloane has feared for years: her sister's death was the beginning of this story.

As the murders escalate across Seattle-from foggy waterfronts and abandoned industrial docks to rainy alleyways and quiet residential streets-Sloane realizes she isn't just chasing a killer-she's playing the lead role in a narrative crafted around her grief, her guilt, and her search for justice. The final entry is dated two weeks from now. It describes her death in chilling detail.

To survive, Sloane must break the pattern, outwit the story, and confront the mastermind who believes her fate is already written. Because The Author isn't predicting murders-he's directing them. And he won't stop until she reads between the murders and writes an ending he never planned.