Detective Alex Marlow is missing.
At least, that’s what the reports say.

There are witnesses. There’s security footage. There’s DNA evidence and fingerprints—too much evidence to deny. The only problem? Alex is standing right there, reading their own case file.

What begins as an impossible clerical error spirals into a nightmare of deception and conspiracy. Colleagues turn cold. Internal Affairs demands psychiatric leave. A witness sketch shows Alex’s face, and a double stalks the streets with their scar, their walk, their smile. Soon Alex is watching their own funeral, a coffin lowered into the ground while the city mourns a life that never truly died.

Behind it all lurks Echo Division, a secret unit dedicated to erasing lives and rewriting reality. Its leader, Captain Holt—Alex’s mentor and puppetmaster—insists it’s patriotism, a shield of order above chaos. But to Alex, it’s a death sentence written in paperwork and stamped in blood.

As Alex unravels decades of hidden operations—whistleblowers silenced, families erased, and Cold War secrets woven into the present—they are forced into the ultimate confrontation: face-to-face with their own double. The doppelgänger insists he’s the real Alex. Evidence agrees. Friends falter. Memories fracture. And with every page of Echo’s master file burned, the truth becomes harder to hold.

The Missing Detective is a relentless thriller about identity, power, and the thin line between truth and survival. Fans of psychological suspense, conspiracy-driven mysteries, and dark, cinematic storytelling will be hooked by its twisting narrative and haunting revelations.

Prepare to enter a world where files matter more than flesh, where funerals can be staged before death, and where the only way to survive is to erase the erasers. But when the smoke clears, one question remains:

If the world decides you no longer exist, can you prove you’re real?

This debut thriller will grip readers until the final page—and leave them questioning the stories they trust about themselves.

unreliable narrator thriller

The Missing Detective: The Case That Shouldn’t Exist