When recently widowed family man, Melvin Peters, stumbles across a grotesque murder in his own basement mortuary, he can’t help but take it personally, both because the victim is an old enemy and well, this is Melvin’s safe place. Besides, this guy was supposed to already be dead, the clue being he was in a mortuary fridge. 

Melvin is doing everything he can to avoid dealing with his personal loss, and, knowing just about everyone in his small English town, and with the encouragement of his intelligent live-in au pair, he throws himself into solving the case, one that will place him on a collision course with figures from his past.

Janice Evans, Melvin’s teenage crush, is the detective assigned to the case. When Janice declares Melvin’s workplace a crime scene, his operations are frozen and he can see his already flat-lining business collapsing, sucking the rest of his life with it. Desperate to resolve the case, it’s just as he gets the crucial breakthrough that he makes his worst, most embarrassing, mistake. Mortified, he kicks off a series of events that will place him and his two children in the ultimate peril.

Mortified will be published in 2026. Sign up to my newsletter if you would like to be notified when.