WHAT SHE KNOWS

Nadia Caron covers the cases no one else stays interested in — the cold files, the forgotten women, the disappearances that stopped making headlines. She's built her entire career on methodical distance: show up after everyone leaves, build the case no one built, don't let the people in the files become people you care about. She's very good at this.

Then she finds her own name on the killer's list.

It was added six weeks ago. The man she's been sleeping with found it four weeks ago and said nothing.

Before she can decide what to do with that — there's the moment she realizes the disappearances aren't cold at all, they're organized and ongoing; the document from a dead woman's backup drive that connects five victims to the same federal case; his tell, a fractional tilt of the head she's noticed a hundred times and never let herself investigate; the night she names the power imbalance out loud and he says I know and neither of them goes anywhere; and the conversation where he tells her the structure of what he's been covering and why — not to manipulate what she feels, but because he knows the difference and wants her to know it too.

She's spent her whole career learning not to care about the people in her cases. He's spent his whole life making calculations so clean he forgot the calculation was the problem. A story that burns the city down is about to undo both of them.

Dark, atmospheric New Orleans crime thriller with a high-heat forbidden romance and an HFN earned the hard way. The kind of book you stay up until 2am finishing because you need to know if she publishes it.

WHY THIS WILL SELL

→ Crime Fiction > Organized Crime sits at 6.9 sales-to-comp (Hot Mainstream) with 170.8 estimated daily sales per top 20 title — one of the highest daily sales figures in the entire MTS category

→ Dual-category play with Crime Fiction > Serial Killers (7.3 sales-to-comp, Hot Mainstream) with 160.8 daily sales — legitimate placement in both categories without splitting the story's identity

→ The morally grey crime boss / forbidden romance crossover is the fastest-growing trope stack in the dark romantic suspense top 20 — captures readers crossing from dark romance into crime fiction

→ New Orleans is underrepresented in the current Organized Crime top 20 — specifically sensory Gulf Coast setting fills a gap in the also-bought ecosystem where NY/Chicago/international settings dominate

→ Series starter with organic Book 2 and Book 3 hooks built in — the unresolved federal informant thread and two secondary protagonists introduced in Book 1 drive read-through from the first chapter

→ Clean-consent power imbalance structure expands the addressable audience beyond Carlton-adjacent dark romance into readers who want the dangerous love interest without non-consent framing

TROPES

• Forbidden romance • Morally grey love interest • Crime boss hero • Dangerous love interest • Secret-keeping hero • Power imbalance (named and navigated) • Female investigator protagonist • She's building the story that ends him • He found her name on the list before she did • The distinction between concealing information and lying • Dark atmospheric New Orleans setting • He knows her tells before she knows his • HFN earned the hard way • Series starter

HEAT LEVEL

Open Door / High Spice, heat-flexible — 3 intimacy scenes flagged for heat adjustment; explicit at full heat with her agency on the page at every level; the power imbalance is named before any escalation and holds throughout; consent architecture is clean at every setting

COMP AUTHORS

Perfect for fans of: H.D. Carlton, Gillian Flynn, Loreth Anne White, and Rina Kent

WHAT'S INSIDE THIS PACKAGE

⭐️ Story Premise — high-concept pitch, elevator pitch, and Market-Matched™ analysis with dual-category positioning (Organized Crime + Serial Killers), competitive analysis against three comp titles, and full Suspense Architecture: hidden timeline (what actually happened, in order) and fair-play audit (every clue planted, misdirection map, and justice checklist)

⭐️ Complete Codex — full story bible with dual POV main characters (journalist and crime boss), supporting cast of 5, six New Orleans settings with specific sensory detail (the Marigny, the Garden District, the French Quarter, the Bywater, the Lakefront, The Lens offices), chapter-by-chapter timeline with verified date math across fourteen weeks, dual first-person voice system with four distinct example passages for Nadia (precise, dry, observational) and Séverin (cold, architectural, cost-outcome), high-heat intimacy guidance with clean consent architecture, and series seeds for 3-book New Orleans Files arc

⭐️ Chapter-by-Chapter Outline — 28 chapters + epilogue with emotional beats, word count targets, scene breakdowns, all 3 intimacy scenes flagged for Dial the Heat™, hidden timeline layer, and fair-play clue placements by chapter

⭐️ AI-Ready Chapter Prompts — fully self-contained prompt for every chapter and epilogue with dual POV voice guidance, heat instructions embedded in flagged chapters, and complete context so each prompt works in a fresh chat with no prior setup

⭐️ Marketing Copy — Amazon listing with categories and 7 keywords, back cover copy, 50-word description, Instagram and Facebook posts, newsletter announcement with 3 subject lines, 5 reader magnet concepts, reader targeting with specific communities, series marketing with tagline options and read-through CTA, and dual Ideogram cover prompts

⭐️ Market-Matched™ Brief — market snapshot table with data for all three categories, 5 data-connected "why this will sell" points, competitive positioning against current MTS top 100 titles, 7-keyword strategy table with per-keyword rationale, and launch positioning including KU recommendation, pricing strategy, cover direction, and series release cadence

One buyer. One story. Exclusively yours.