The Passenger Who Wasn't

Cozy Mystery · Mild intensity · 27 chapters + epilogue · 80K novel · 1st person

Complete planning package, 112 pages: the premise, a full codex, every chapter outlined, an AI prompt for every chapter, and the whole launch kit — listing, blurb, keywords, posts, newsletter, reader magnet — already written. One buyer only. When it’s claimed, it’s gone.

Gail Kaminski spent thirty years at an insurance firm reading documents for lies. She can spot a forged claim in under ten minutes, and she has never once accepted "the file says so" as an answer to anything. When her firm restructured her out at fifty-seven, she took the only offer that sounded like thinking: bridge host on a ten-day fall foliage cruise from Boston to Quebec City. One port per day. October light on the Gulf of Maine. Nothing to investigate.

Then Opal Lindqvist — eighty-one years old and more certain than anyone on this ship has given her credit for — comes to the card room door.

Her bridge partner boarded with her in Boston. Now the crew swears the woman never existed. No manifest entry. No keycard record. No cabin assignment. The ship is very kind and very certain: no passenger named Bunny Sorrell has ever been aboard the MS Halcyon Reach.

Gail played cards with Bunny Sorrell herself. She has the compact Bunny left under her chair. She has Opal's account, delivered with the precision of a woman who taught piano for forty years and knows exactly what it means to describe something correctly.

Before she can prove a person exists, there's a cabin steward found dead in the ship's laundry under circumstances that don't survive close examination, a maintenance sticker applied to a forward storage room the night of departure that has suspiciously new adhesive, the one crew member who should have answers who used the past tense about Bunny two days before anyone else did, and eight days on a closed ship — one port per day — before Quebec City and whatever's left of the evidence disappear with the tide.

Gail has spent her career finding the single record that doesn't lie. Somewhere on this ship, Bunny left one.

She's spent thirty years being thorough in a world that kept asking her to be faster. He's spent thirty-nine years being someone else entirely, and he's very good at it. What neither of them counted on is a retired fraud investigator who doesn't trust a document just because it looks official.

Wry, ticking-clock cozy mystery set on a fall foliage cruise from Boston to Quebec City. The kind of book where the most satisfying moment is a piece of paper doing exactly what a piece of paper is supposed to do.

WHAT’S INSIDE THIS PACKAGE

⭐️ Story Premise — high-concept pitch, elevator pitch, and Market-Matched™ analysis with triple-category positioning (Amateur Sleuth, Cozy, Women Sleuths), full Suspense Architecture with 8-clue fair-play ledger and confirmed solve point, and competitive analysis against three proven comps

⭐️ Complete Codex — full story bible with Gail Kaminski and 10 named supporting characters (full profiles), dual surface/hidden timeline tracking what Gail experiences vs. what actually happened, single-POV first-person voice system with four example passages, all major settings with unique sensory detail, and series seeds for 2 future Gail Kaminski books

⭐️ Chapter-by-Chapter Outline — 27 chapters + epilogue with scene bullets, emotional beats, key dialogue, chapter-specific sensory details, clue/concealment tracking per chapter, and ending hooks; structured by cruise day and port stop

⭐️ AI-Ready Chapter Prompts — one fully self-contained prompt per chapter and epilogue with complete continuity context, clue-planting instructions, concealment guidance, and voice notes embedded; fresh-chat ready

⭐️ Amazon Launch Kit — the listing, written: Amazon listing with dual-category positioning and 7 KDP keywords and back cover copy

⭐️ Reader & Promo Kit — 50-word description, Instagram post with hashtags, Facebook post, newsletter announcement with 3 subject line options, reader magnet concepts, comp author line, and series launch strategy

⭐️ Market-Matched™ Brief — category snapshot table, 5 data-backed "why this will sell" points, comp title positioning statements, full 7-keyword strategy table with per-keyword rationale, and launch positioning with pricing, cover direction, and series read-through strategy

You write the book. The listing, the blurb, the keywords, the posts, the newsletter and the reader magnet are already written.

One buyer. One story. Exclusively yours.

WHY THIS WILL SELL

→ Cruise is the #1 Occasion trope by demand-vs-competition (index: 100) in the cozy mystery market — and it's underrepresented at only 2.4% of titles. First cruise package on the P&P cozy shelf.

→ Kidnapping is the #1 Crime trope by demand-vs-competition (index: 100), rising +2 YoY — the central crime maps directly onto the top-performing crime category without the genre clutter of standard murder-whodunits.

→ Private Investigator is the #1 Hero trope by demand-vs-competition (index: 100), rising +4 YoY — Gail's fraud investigation background captures this demand signal with a premise no current cruise cozy replicates.

→ Dual-category play: Amateur Sleuth (81 est. daily sales/top-20 title) + Women Sleuths (170 est. daily sales/top-20 title) — Women Sleuths is the highest-volume premium category in the cozy adjacent space.

→ The "prove a person existed" premise is architecturally distinct from every current cruise ship cozy bestseller — it's a structural innovation within a proven lane, not a retread.

→ Built-in cross-sell to A Villa to Die For (the existing P&P travel cozy) — shared travel/occasion setting with a different enough premise to drive add-on sales, not cannibalize.

TROPES: • Lady vanishes / gaslit witness • Closed-circle suspects (ship as locked setting) • Ex-professional amateur sleuth • Ticking clock • The elderly witness everyone underestimates — who is right about everything • Found family in the card room • Slow-burn ship's officer romance • Paperwork-as-detection • Fair-play clue puzzle • One port per day pressure cooker

CONTENT LEVEL: Cozy / Clean — off-page death; no graphic violence; no explicit content; closed-door romance; one kiss maximum. Suitable for all cozy mystery readers.

Perfect for fans of: Steve Higgs (Patricia Fisher Cruise Ship Mysteries), Laura Lippman, Richard Osman, Kristen Perrin (How to Solve Your Own Murder)

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