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Typecast for Murder: A bookshop cozy mystery about a dangerous manuscript, a murdered mentor, and the dark side of ghostwriting
Typecast for Murder
The Secret Pages Bookshop Mysteries Book 2
Some writers steal lines.
Some agents steal lives.
Blocked crime novelist and reluctant sleuth Riley Knox thinks she’s finally found a way to keep the lights on at Secret Pages Bookshop. A local co-working space hires her as a ghost editor for once-famous crime writer Elliot Marsh. All she has to do is fix his sagging plots, sign a stack of NDAs, and pretend she doesn’t see how far his star has fallen.
Then she walks into his office one cold morning and finds him slumped over his antique typewriter, a whiskey bottle on the desk and a dramatic “suicide note” in the carriage.
The police see a washed-up author who finally cracked.
Riley sees a paragraph she recognises word for word.
The note isn’t in Elliot’s voice at all.
It’s in hers.
Pulled from a manuscript she ghosted for him years ago, the phrasing is too precise to be coincidence. When Riley discovers whole chapters of Elliot’s work stitched together from other people’s writing – a hopeful mentee, an angry fanfiction author, even a long-dead Thornbridge novelist – she realises someone has been playing cut-and-paste with more than stories.
Soon she’s
A ruthless ex-agent quietly shopping Elliot’s backlist to Hollywood
A young writer whose promised “big break” was stolen, line by line
A furious fan whose Marian-Locke-inspired stories keep turning up in print under other names
A co-working space owner who needed buzz, not a body
The official verdict is suicide, the contracts say she must keep quiet, and Detective Noah Ellison is already out of patience with her involvement. But when Riley finds Elliot’s research into the decades-old death of local author Marian Locke – and the agency that buried her work – she knows this isn’t just about one dead man at a typewriter.
It’s about who gets to own a story, who gets erased, and how far the powerful will go to stop the truth getting typed.
To expose a killer, Riley will have to break her NDAs, tank her ghostwriting career, and stage a very public writers’ circle where the murderer has no script to hide behind.
Because this time, she refuses to be the ghost.
Typecast for Murder is a cozy, clue-rich mystery about a dangerous manuscript, a murdered mentor, and the dark side of ghostwriting, perfect for fans of bookshop cozies, publishing-world intrigue, and small-town whodunits with wit, warmth, and no gore.
The Secret Pages Bookshop Mysteries Book 2
Some writers steal lines.
Some agents steal lives.
Blocked crime novelist and reluctant sleuth Riley Knox thinks she’s finally found a way to keep the lights on at Secret Pages Bookshop. A local co-working space hires her as a ghost editor for once-famous crime writer Elliot Marsh. All she has to do is fix his sagging plots, sign a stack of NDAs, and pretend she doesn’t see how far his star has fallen.
Then she walks into his office one cold morning and finds him slumped over his antique typewriter, a whiskey bottle on the desk and a dramatic “suicide note” in the carriage.
The police see a washed-up author who finally cracked.
Riley sees a paragraph she recognises word for word.
The note isn’t in Elliot’s voice at all.
It’s in hers.
Pulled from a manuscript she ghosted for him years ago, the phrasing is too precise to be coincidence. When Riley discovers whole chapters of Elliot’s work stitched together from other people’s writing – a hopeful mentee, an angry fanfiction author, even a long-dead Thornbridge novelist – she realises someone has been playing cut-and-paste with more than stories.
Soon she’s
A ruthless ex-agent quietly shopping Elliot’s backlist to Hollywood
A young writer whose promised “big break” was stolen, line by line
A furious fan whose Marian-Locke-inspired stories keep turning up in print under other names
A co-working space owner who needed buzz, not a body
The official verdict is suicide, the contracts say she must keep quiet, and Detective Noah Ellison is already out of patience with her involvement. But when Riley finds Elliot’s research into the decades-old death of local author Marian Locke – and the agency that buried her work – she knows this isn’t just about one dead man at a typewriter.
It’s about who gets to own a story, who gets erased, and how far the powerful will go to stop the truth getting typed.
To expose a killer, Riley will have to break her NDAs, tank her ghostwriting career, and stage a very public writers’ circle where the murderer has no script to hide behind.
Because this time, she refuses to be the ghost.
Typecast for Murder is a cozy, clue-rich mystery about a dangerous manuscript, a murdered mentor, and the dark side of ghostwriting, perfect for fans of bookshop cozies, publishing-world intrigue, and small-town whodunits with wit, warmth, and no gore.
405 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 24, 2025
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January 6, 2026
I enjoyed book 2 in this series. One note though: the book starts with Jas using She/Her/Hers pronouns. From the middle to the end, Jas has changed and is using He/Him/His pronouns. I was a bit confused, but went with it.
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