The Handyman's Deadly Secret

“The coffee’s strong, the books are dusty, and the ghosts are chatty.” That’s Linny Crane’s motto for The Curious Case, his Ebonreach Bay cafe and discreet side-hustle as the town’s resident supernatural troubleshooter. But when beloved handyman Frankie Jo McCrae turns up drowned – a death her very persistent ghost insists was no accident – Linny is pulled into a mystery far darker than his strongest brew.

His unexpected ally? Nora Penrose, a sharp, new-in-town journalist whose own secrets are as intriguing as the town’s unsettling past. As spectral warnings clash with very real dangers, Linny and Nora must decipher cryptic clues left by the dead and uncover a vanished fortune tied to an infamous decades-old bank robbery.

But with a killer willing to eliminate anyone who gets too close, and the lines between charming partner and mysterious new arrival blurring, Linny has to decide if he can truly trust the woman a ghost warned him about before Ebonreach Bay’s secrets claim them both.

Author Biography

J. L. Koontz wasn’t always an author, but was always a storyteller.

Born in the 1980s, with a creative streak that blossomed from long days chasing friends, swimming in creeks, and pretending to be any number of fantastical characters, J.L.Koontz spends countless hours daydreaming of worlds full of less strife and more humor.

When not lost in the art of storytelling, Koontz can be found giving guitar lessons, laying down tracks in the studio with friends, or simply daydreaming new ideas for almost anything.

An avid consumer of audiobooks, J.L. Koontz looks forward to the day characters from these pages might find their voice through sound. A deep love for cozy mysteries, action-packed novels, courtroom dramas, and sprawling fantasies has shaped the author’s narrative style, drawing inspiration from favorite authors such as Kel Kade, Janet Evanovich, John Grisham, Nora Roberts, and J.K. Rowling.