Jake Horn Mysteries
A Good Time for Goodbye (Book 1)
When your ex becomes your client, the only thing more dangerous is the truth.
Boston, 1978.
Private investigator Jake Horn has spent years learning to live with ghosts—his wife’s murder, his uncle’s failing PI agency, and the daughter he’s raised alone.
These days, he’s desperate enough to take almost any job.
Except one.
When his ex-fiancée walks into his South Boston office asking him to prove her husband has been cheating, Jake knows better than to get involved.
But then the husband turns up dead.
And the woman Jake has tried hard to forget disappears.
Now the police are circling, and Jake’s past is catching up with him. If he can’t find her—and the truth—fast, he won’t just lose his freedom.
This time, he'll lose the only thing in his life that still matters.
The Silence of the Sand
Summer, 1978. Jake Horn came to Maine for a weekend with his daughter, not another body.
Nancy heads back to college in New Hampshire in a few days, and Jake’s determined to make this time count. After months apart, he’s finally got her to himself. No cases. No ghosts. Just a quiet beach town and a chance to be the father he’s been trying to be since his wife was murdered.
Then an early morning jog along Goose Rocks Beach ends with a corpse in the sand.
Within twenty-four hours, the local cops arrest the brother of a prominent restaurateur. Case closed. Except Jake’s seen enough frame jobs to know one when he smells it, and it’s not just the low tide that reeks.
The evidence is damning. The suspect has no alibi. And every powerful voice in town wants the Boston PI out of their business. But when threats turn serious and his daughter’s safety hangs in the balance, walking away isn’t an option.
The deeper Jake digs, the more tangled it gets. And in a small town where everyone knows everyone, protecting Emily might mean becoming the very thing this quiet beach town fears most.
When the Smoke Clears
January, 1979. Jake Horn didn’t start the fire—but now he’s standing in the flames.
A snowstorm hits Boston the night a mysterious woman calls Jake’s office asking for help. She never shows. Hours later, police find a body in the snow two blocks away. When the woman finally surfaces, she’s got a story: her wealthy car dealership owner husband died in a hot air balloon accident ten months ago.
The New Hampshire cops ruled it accidental and moved on. His family wants Jake to leave it alone. But the man’s widow is convinced it was murder. And Jake’s seen enough “accidents” to know when something doesn’t add up.
The deeper he digs, the more dangerous it gets. Mob enforcers warn him to back off. A former Boston cop has too much invested in keeping the case closed. And when bodies start piling up, Jake realizes he’s not just investigating a murder—he might be next.
In a case where the truth keeps shifting and everyone has something to hide, Jake will have to risk everything to find the killer before the smoke clears.
A Ring and a Prayer (Series prequel)
Before Jake Horn was on his own, there was his uncle.
Boston, 1969.
The Horn Detective Agency is struggling, and the man who built it knows things are coming to an end.
Jake Horn arrives late one morning, distracted and exhausted—raising his young daughter alone after the murder of his wife.
Expecting to be reprimanded, he’s instead asked to breakfast at a diner, where his uncle Pat shares news that will change the course of Jake’s life.
What follows is a period of uncertainty: an agency showing cracks, loyalty tested, and a young single father forced to decide whether he’s capable of carrying on something he never asked for.
When an elderly man asks Jake for help recovering his late wife’s missing ring, the case seems small—almost trivial. But it becomes a quiet proving ground, and the first moment Jake begins to understand what his uncle saw in him.
A prequel novella about inheritance, loss, and the slow, uneasy birth of self-belief.