Berkley
Published July 21, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
After her mother, a best-selling crime fiction author, dies in a freak accident, Niamh moves into her house in a quaint Shropshire village. It could be a lonely existence – the villagers are a mixed bag, and Niamh suffers from social anxiety. But she’s joined by an unlikely housemate: Leah Rebecca Overton, the bad-ass heroine of her mother’s popular series, joins her and urges her to find out what really happened when her author fell from a ladder and broke her neck.
It’s kind of a haunting, having a literary character than no one else can see living with her. Their characters could hardly be more different. Unlike the brave and resourceful blunt-talking northerner of the thrillers, Niamh is unsure of herself and at a loss about how she will move on in her life. She has dabbled with script writing, but has never finished her university degree or managed to make a living. While she mourns her mother, having her much more capable creation move in and try to take charge is daunting. But she takes on the quest of untangling what happened to her mother, realizing there is definitely something strange about her mother’s “accident.”
Lotz has created an unusual scenario, with Niamh’s slacker character contrasted with the fictional ideal her mother created. She tries to take on the kind of crime-solving that is not in her skill set, eventually overcoming her fears and shedding some of her lack of confidence. While the story has hallmarks of a cozy – the village setting, the eccentric cast of suspects, plenty of humor – some readers may be nonplussed to find Niamh has an unusually salty way of expressing herself. While she never quite achieves the bad-ass attitude of her fictional friend, she grows more courageous and capable, even as Leah Rebecca Overton’s sharp edges gradually grow smoother.
The mystery puzzle is fairly standard, but the interaction between two very different characters (one a character in more than one sense) adds a layer of metafictional playfulness.