First published 2022
Steven Smith carries a forty-year-old mystery. As a struggling student, he brought his teacher Miss Isles a children's book filled with cryptic notes and symbols. She became obsessed with the markings, convinced they revealed a hidden message woven throughout author Edith Twyford's entire collection. Miss Isles believed she could crack this secret code. Then she vanished during a school trip, and Steven's traumatic memories of that day remain locked away. Fresh out of prison decades later, Steven returns to his old neighborhood determined to uncover the truth. He tracks down former classmates and revisits childhood locations, hoping to recover his lost memories and discover what happened to Miss Isles. But Steven soon learns he's not alone in his quest. Others are hunting for the Twyford Code, and they'll do anything to possess its power. Steven must piece together fragments of the past before those seeking the code silence him forever.
Genres: suspense, mystery, crime, adult-fiction, thriller, psychological-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, mysterious, suspenseful, tension-filled, thought-provoking
Tropes: mystery-box, past-haunting-present, puzzle-solving, unreliable-narrator
Setting: old neighborhood
Period: forty years ago, present day
384 pages · Paperback · Viper
Content warnings: death, violence