Whimsy was murdered. And the clock is ticking in the key of Discord.
The music is dying. And the silence is a killer.
Some mysteries can only be solved in the key of truth.
It’s been three months since Dekker Kohl, Trovatore for the Columbus Conservatory, wrote a note worth keeping. He calls it a dry spell. He doesn't yet know it's a symptom of something much more lethal.
The signs are everywhere. Singers losing their pitch mid-phrase. Composers staring at pages that won't fill. Jazz clubs locked in a minor key they can't escape. Something is draining the city of its creative soul, and it's leaving bodies behind.
When a fellow musician is found strangled with a violin string, Dekker is the only one who can hear the harmonic echoes left at the scene. But the investigation pulls him into a conspiracy older and stranger than murder: the systematic destruction of Whimsy itself.
With a six-legged witness as his only lead and his own magic failing, Dekker must decode a final, impossible composition before the music stops for good. Because the world won't end without Whimsy. It'll just stop being worth living in.
A haunting, melodic mystery that will resonate with fans of Rivers of London and The Dresden Files, blending the grit of hardboiled noir with a symphony of original magic.