Courtesy of A Dead Man

The past doesn't die easy. Neither do the lies.

When Professor Victor Grayson collapses at a Fifth Avenue dinner party, most chalk it up to a weak heart. But one doctor sees more-and calls in Detective Nathaniel Redding.

What Redding finds isn't simple. Grayson wasn't just a scholar polishing essays. He was sitting on a powder keg: financial fraud, missing evidence, and a blackmail note pointing to a secret he couldn't afford to let slip. The man's life was a hot mess of secret love and buried rage that's been simmering for decades.

The suspect looks perfect: a public grudge, a blackmail note, and the kind of reputation that makes conviction easy. The city's high and mighty want the scandal dead. The department wants it buried faster. But the closer Redding gets, the more the case slips sideways.

Down in Washington D.C, at Grayson's alma mater, McAllister University, the whispers aren't about murder-they're about betrayal, theft, and ambition rotten to the core.

Turns out the man in the cell is not the one with the most to hide-but unless Redding clears his name, he may be the next to die.