The Thirteenth Riddle: A Poisoned Silence
A Hannah Walker Mystery
The shadows of Paris were only the beginning. In the wake of a wedding shattered by violence, Detective Hannah Walker has emerged as a woman transformed—hardened, relentless, and no longer playing by the rules. But the ghosts of her past refuse to stay buried.
The nightmare resurfaces when the body of Laura Gonzalez—the woman who sealed Hannah’s fate during the Deadly College Murders—is discovered in a cold apartment. Beside the corpse lies a single, mocking riddle, a jagged fragment of a puzzle Hannah thought she had solved. The game turns lethal when her beloved godfather, Rafael, is kidnapped and injected with a slow-acting toxin. As his life begins to drain away, the trail leads them toward Lucerne and a mysterious figure known only as Dr. Stu.
But as Hannah and Rafael race toward Die Klinik: Den Geist zu Heilen, the battlefield shifts from the physical world to the fractured landscape of Hannah's mind. She is haunted by a recurring, waking nightmare: a high-speed train cutting through a void, where she sits across from a faceless shadow. Between them sits a porcelain pot of tea—a deceptively calm ritual that hides a deadly reality. In these visions, the steam carries the scent of bitter almonds, and Hannah realizes that the tea she drinks in her dreams is poisoning her in the real world.
In a desperate act of loyalty to save her godfather, Hannah intentionally tethers her fate to his, embracing the toxins as they course through her veins. Now, as both godfather and goddaughter face a poisoned silence, their only hope lies with Tatiana—the enigmatic former illusionist and godmother to Hannah’s daughter, Shayla.
At the clinic where "healing minds" is a mask for erasing them forever, Hannah must navigate a distorted Hallway of Mirrors that threatens to shatter her sanity. If she breaks the glass, she might find the cure; if she fails, the reflection will be the last thing she ever sees.
Will Hannah survive the nightmare to return to her daughter, Shayla? Or will the thirteenth riddle be the last thing she ever hears?
The answers lie in The Thirteenth Riddle: A Poisoned Silence.