Kill the Lights

A debut thriller in which PI Emily Pratt investigates a murder at her former high school, an incident that will plunge her back into the privileged world and complicated relationships of her own teenage years

Life hasn’t worked out the way Emily Pratt once hoped, but at forty-two, she’s married and a first-time mom to a baby girl. She knows that the people she grew up with would look down on the low-rent private investigator she’s become since smashing up her life two decades ago, but she hasn’t spoken to them in ages, and anyway, she’s used to disappointment.

Then she gets a message from her high school crush. His seventeen-year-old daughter was killed one year ago at her prep school, the same one he and Emily attended, and he wants Emily’s help before the case turns cold. At first, the job is a welcome reprieve from the domestic drudgery of early parenthood, but the more time Emily spends in the rarified world she thought she’d left behind, the more she is reminded of a past she would rather forget.

As Emily follows the investigation across state lines and through a thick postpartum fog, will she be able to face up to her past to find a killer? And if she goes too far on her quest into the past, will she still have a family to return home to when the case ends?

Pulsing and unpredictable, Kill the Lights has the hallmarks of classic noir with a thoroughly modern spin and the cynical, darkly humorous narrative of a grown-up Veronica Mars, perfect for fans of Long Bright River and I’ve Got Some Questions for You.