Dead After Midnight

Honey Walia has three problems.

Her private-investigation business is broke.

Her judgement around attractive men has never been recognised as a professional strength.

And she has just woken naked in a luxury Delhi hotel beside a dead woman.

Thirteen days earlier, Honey's problems were considerably cheaper.

A wealthy client had hired her to investigate Vikram Bedi, the handsome husband she suspected of having an affair. It should have been routine: follow him, photograph him, identify the woman and collect the fee.

Honey is very good at following people.

Keeping an appropriate distance from them is another matter.

By the time the case leads her to the Meridian Crown after midnight, Honey has crossed a line she was paid to observe rather than participate in.

Hours later she wakes drugged, bruised and missing part of the night.

The man she remembers being with is gone.

A woman Honey knows is dead beside her.

There is blood beneath Honey's fingernails.

And the murder weapon belongs to her.

Inspector Arnav Raghavan knows Honey well enough to understand that bad judgement is not the same thing as murder. Unfortunately, evidence is less sentimental.

To clear herself, Honey must reconstruct the hours somebody erased and discover why a straightforward adultery investigation was never really about adultery at all.

Because somebody has spent a great deal of money arranging the truth.

And Honey Walia has just become the most convenient lie in the room.

Dead After Midnight is a contemporary private-investigator thriller of murder, desire, deception and catastrophically poor professional boundaries, introducing a detective who knows better surprisingly often and does it anyway.

She was hired to catch a cheating husband.
She woke up framed for murder.