The riveting new Mave Michael novel from the acclaimed author of The Hitman's Daughter!
Ever since the hitman’s daughter, Mave Michael Francis learned she is the owner of a crumbling grand hotel, life has been upside-down. Not only is she struggling to fit into her new role and to reconcile with her incarcerated father, but a string of bizarre burglaries is plaguing the nearby village. Meanwhile, the hotel director is running ghost tours to drum up desperately-needed revenue, and Mave’s staff is scrambling to host an over-the-top goth wedding. Mave needs to ensure the event is a success to rescue the hotel from bankruptcy. But when she discovers the mask of the Château du Ciel’s rumored ghost in the defunct greenhouse where the wedding ceremony is booked, her priorities fracture.
Months ago, the supposed ghost, Holden Frost saved Mave’s life, then vanished into thin air. It’s an enigma and debt she can’t forget. As she plans for the big wedding by day, Mave secretly digs into Holden’s true identity and disappearance by night. Her search takes her to the most sinister place: the darknet. And instead of answers to decode Holden’s whereabouts, she attracts a stranger online who also wants Holden Frost found—and who will kill Mave’s father in prison unless Mave delivers Holden’s location, dead or alive. Tick tock.
As the clock winds down to the wedding and her father’s potential murder, Mave becomes increasingly ensnarled in Holden’s troubled past. And while she’s being used as bait to raise Holden from the dead, the stranger online may be closing in for the kill—and may be closer to her at the hotel, than her father in prison.
The Château du Ciel was once the destination for the rich and famous to play, drink and ski—complete with a private railway to shuttle those desiring extra privacy—now, however, the guests are few and far between. The New Year’s Eve party was supposed to hoist the rundown hotel back to its former status, until a massive blizzard hits, trapping the guests who’ve come to celebrate the grand hotel’s last hurrah. The circumstances might even be romantic, if the hotel wasn't reputed to be haunted.
When hotel employee Mave Michael finds the resident artist dead, and shortly thereafter hotel security finds Mave alone with the body, the reputation that Mave has fought long and hard to outrun comes back to haunt her. You see, her father is a notorious hitman who is serving multiple life sentences in prison. She has changed her name and location dozens of times, but he somehow manages to track her down—even sending her a postcard on the eve of her birthday, January 1st. She’s the perfect choice to frame for murder, and now the number one suspect.
Mave can no longer deny the lessons in survival her father taught her, and calls on that and her uncanny sixth-sense in “finding” lost objects to navigate the maze of the hotel. To save herself, she not only has to stop running from her own past, she must unearth the history of the hotel, its elite guests and buried secrets—one deadly sin at a time.
An homage to classic gothic horror, that proves that the ghosts of family and classism are alive and well.
