The Murders Began

When a man is found dead in an upscale Cleveland townhouse—tied to a bed, a bullet through his heart—forty-three-year-old Tia Wetzel becomes the prime suspect. It isn’t the first time she’s stood accused. More than a decade earlier, she served time for a drug conviction she’s always claimed was a setup.

Now prosecutor Nicole Long is preparing to bring Tia to trial.

But the evidence is thin. The witnesses are unreliable. And the deeper Nicole digs, the harder it becomes to ignore an unsettling possibility:

What if Tia was telling the truth the first time?

Meanwhile, homicide investigator Loren Logan is quietly reopening cases that don’t add up, while podcaster Blake Hardin Tatum follows a trail of her own. Their investigations begin pointing toward the same place—the justice system Nicole has built her career inside.

The threads stretch from a troubled child in 1950s Ohio to a modern-day murder, and toward people with the power to decide who gets prosecuted, who walks free, and whose version of the truth becomes law.

For Nicole, uncovering what happened could mean questioning everything she believes about justice—and risking the career she’s fought to save.

The Murders Began is Book 3 in the Nicole Long legal thriller series, a dark, character-driven crime series about power, corruption, ambition, and the dangerous difference between what the law says and what justice demands.