In a world carefully constructed for murder, solving crimes takes a keen mind and eye in a witty, clever, and fresh reinvention of the whodunit by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Goldberg.
Edison Bixby is wealthy, handsome, and, due to a traumatic brain injury, impulsively rude. He’s also a brilliant insurance investigator who solves baffling crimes by figuring out how the design of the man-made world around us makes them possible. Enter Wally Nash: a struggling actor hired to keep Bixby from offending everyone he meets.
Their first case together looks like a simple accident. Caroline Crowley took a nasty fall down a staircase at a shopping mall in front of dozens of witnesses. Video clearly shows the deadly misstep. But Bixby is certain she was murdered by design, subtly manipulated into causing her own demise. The mall itself made the crime intentional, if not inevitable.
Now Bixby must prove his outrageous theory before a very cunning killer gets others on his hit list to murder themselves, too.
It’s been years since I wrote my 16 MONK novels…or anything in first-person…and I was eager to get back to that genre (if not back to Adrian Monk). But first I had to come up with a fresh take on the Columbo/Monk/Sherlock Holmes paradigm that would look at murders from an entirely new perspective. Once I came up with it, and a character to go along with it, I spent a loooonnnggg time doing research, while also writing new Eve Ronin and Sharpe & Walker novels along the way. I hope you all enjoy MURDER BY DESIGN so I can spend more time with Edison Bixby and Wally Nash…