The Shot That Never Fired: A twisty cozy about a vanishing shooter, a charity gala, and a bullet that never existed

About The Shot That Never Fired: A twisty cozy about a vanishing shooter, a charity gala, and a bullet that never existed

A twisty cozy about a vanishing shooter, a charity gala, and a bullet that never existedKit Morley only agreed to attend the hospital fundraiser because it promised free canapés, a decent view of the sea, and no corpses. Two out of three wasn’t bad. When the guest of honor, hospital board member Gideon Vale, steps up to the microphone, the lights dim, the slideshow flickers on, and a deafening crack rips through the hall.

Guests scream. Staff dive to the floor. Gideon clutches his chest and collapses at the podium.

Everyone swears they heard a gunshot. No one sees a gun. There’s no hole in his jacket, no shattered glass, and Kit smells burnt sugar, not cordite.

The police look for a shooter. Kit looks for a sound cue. With retired customs man Owen Sharpe tracing suspicious “consultancy” fees, Mrs.

Bellamy treating the gala like a badly staged play, and Priya Rae digging into vendor contracts and AV bookings, the Laurel Court Cold-Case Club starts to suspect the murder was scripted long before the first donor arrived. A slideshow contains a hidden audio sting. The raffle drum has a secret compartment.

Gideon’s smartwatch records his heart misfiring minutes before the “shot.” And the man in charge of hospital procurement had more than one reason to silence him. As Kit follows the trail through hospital corridors, supplier invoices, and gala playlists, she keeps tripping over a familiar ghost: the missing librarian Iris Pell and a donor group called “Friends of LB-42,” carved into the hospital’s donor wall and scratched out by hand.