JL Collins Publishing LLC
JL Collins Publishing LLC
on Books.by
The Vale & Ward Files, Book 1

The Echo Man

She remembers everything. He wants her to remember what the system buried.

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About the Book

Detective Cassandra Vale never forgets. With hyperthymesia - perfect autobiographical memory - she recalls every detail of every case she's worked in her twenty-two-year career. Every victim. Every failure. Every case that went cold.

When a woman is found murdered in an abandoned opera house, staged to match a 1999 serial killer's signature, Cass immediately recognizes details that were never released to the public. The positioning. The missing earring. The erasure symbol carved into the floor.

Someone is creating "echoes" - perfect recreations of famous closed cases.

And they're just getting started.

Partnered with Detective Ethan Ward, Cass uncovers a terrifying pattern. Each echo victim has a connection to someone who failed the original investigation. A detective who let a case go cold. An analyst who misprocessed evidence. A prosecutor who took the easy plea.

The Echo Man is forcing the system to remember what it tried to forget.

But when Cass discovers her own name on the killer's target list, the investigation becomes personal. Because twenty-two years ago, she took a missing person report for a young woman named Alyssa Drew. And when Alyssa turned up dead - staged like the Sapphire Killer's victims - the case was closed without a proper investigation.

Filed away. Forgotten.

Now, the Echo Man wants Cass to remember.

As the body count rises, Cass and Ward race to identify the killer before he strikes again. Their investigation leads them to Malcolm Harlan - a legendary detective who disappeared in 2004 - and his protege, Isaac Grey, a brilliant former cop with a twisted sense of justice.

But the truth is more complex than either detective imagined. Because the echoes aren't just about murder. They're about exposing a decades-old conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of law enforcement. A conspiracy built on buried evidence, covered-up crimes, and victims the system chose to forget.

To catch the Echo Man, Cass must confront the case that's haunted her for two decades. She must remember everything she tried to forget. And she must face the possibility that some victims were sacrificed to protect the system itself.

With pulse-pounding suspense, complex characters, and a twist that will leave you breathless, The Echo Man introduces Detective Cassandra Vale - a woman whose perfect memory might be the only thing standing between justice and chaos.

The Echo Man is the first book in The Vale & Ward Files trilogy. Each book features a complete mystery while building the overarching relationship between Cass and Ward as they tackle the cases nobody else can solve.

The Author

JL Collins Publishing LLC

JL Collins Publishing LLC

"Several voices. One promise: books worth staying up too late for."

JL Collins Publishing is a small independent press built by storytellers, for readers. Under one roof you'll find several distinct voices — thrillers that won't let you sleep, romance and romantasy that pull you under, and nonfiction that actually meets you where you are. Different names, one promise: books worth staying up too late for. Find the voice that's yours and start reading.

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