A Tidy Death

Alana West was the face of absolute perfection. To four million followers, she was the “Pure Living” queen — a beacon of minimalist elegance and domestic bliss. But when she’s found bludgeoned to death in her immaculate Manhattan townhouse, the filter finally breaks. Behind the single room staged for the cameras lies a rotting labyrinth of secrets. Upstairs is a hoarder’s nightmare, a stifling mountain of filth that could topple a tech empire and expose a calculated killer.

Enter Vesper Cates. A high-end fixer with a past as an elite art thief and a present governed by severe OCD, Vesper is the only person in New York who can scrub this secret clean. Her cover is “interior detox,” but her real job is making sure the world never sees the chaos behind the curtain. Her mission is simple: sanitize the hoard before the police go upstairs. But in the oppressive heat of a record-breaking August, the air in the West townhouse is thick with more than just dust — it’s thick with danger.

Standing in her way is Liam Shaw. A sharp-eyed insurance detective investigating a $30 million payout, Liam is the one man who knows Vesper’s history and the only man she can’t seem to manipulate. As they collide in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse, the sparks between them threaten to ignite Vesper’s carefully controlled world. Liam suspects fraud; Vesper knows it’s far worse.

With the clock ticking and the heat rising, Vesper must decide what’s more dangerous: the conspiracy hunting her, or the man who is beginning to see the real woman behind her flawless armor. In a world where every post is a lie, can Vesper survive the clutter of a messy heart?

Perfect for fans of The Maid by Nita Prose, The Guest List by Lucy Foley, Verity by Colleen Hoover.