The Watchman's Secret

A winter storm throws a varnished rowboat onto the shingle below Hollow Eye Lighthouse. Inside: a skeleton dressed for foul weather and three clues that don’t add up-a Belgian pocket pistol, a cigarette case with one stick marked “WICKED TODAY,” and a gold pocket watch on an old albert chain. Noah Yalland, a once-relentless investigative journalist lying low in Treggan Bay, isn’t built to look away. When DS Scott Langdon brings the case to his kitchen table-and Noah’s old friend Issey Ashford arrives with a notebook-the quiet sabbatical ends.

On the south Devon coast in the present day, the mystery builds from tangible evidence. Forensics suggest a man in his fifties or sixties, killed by gunfire decades ago and hidden somewhere damp and salt-aired before the sea returned him. As the trio divide the work-the pistol to Scott, the watch to Issey, the cigarette case to Noah-the watch’s trail hints at a buried life entangled with money and politics, widening the search from the cove to old channels of power.

Drawn toward Leo Petit of the Drift Café, and pressed by village loyalties, smuggling talk, and a lighthouse that seems to collect secrets, Noah has a simple, dangerous goal: name the dead man and pry open what Treggan Bay kept shut-before the cost of the truth lands on those he’s begun to love. Includes one on-page intimate scene (kissing), historical/off-page violence and remains, and occasional strong language; stand-alone. Perfect for readers who enjoy coastal cold cases, slow-burn queer romance, small-town secrecy, found-family sleuthing, windswept lighthouses, mysteries solved by clues you can hold.