Four days.
On Friday, October 30, Bedrock Murders goes out into the world. Kindle, paperback and hardcover, all on the same day. After the last two weeks of talking about who I am and how I work, this week is about the book itself.
The town
Bedrock, Ontario, is a lime quarry town. The quarry has always taken men. People there have made a kind of peace with that, the way you do with weather.
Then, at three in the morning, a loaded haul truck goes over the north face and into the pit.
The company has a word for what happens in a place like that: accident. The town has a habit of agreeing. But ten years ago an electrician named Garry Burke died on that site, the company called it a lockout violation, and Bedrock stopped talking about it.
Somebody never stopped counting.
The detective
Detective Sam Finch, Major Crime out of Kingston, hears the call on his scanner because he doesn’t sleep. He’s four years sober and barely holding his own compulsions in check. He isn’t a hero walking in to save anyone. He’s a man who knows exactly how fragile control is, sent into a town that runs on pretending it’s in control.
Beside him is his partner, Brenda Scouts, who notices every inconsistency and writes it all down. I love writing her. Every detective story needs someone who won’t let a small wrong detail slide.
And there’s Marion Burke, Garry’s widow. She’s the only person in Bedrock willing to say out loud what everyone else calls bad luck.
Behind the book
Bedrock Murders isn’t a whodunit dressed up in quarry dust. It’s about grief that doesn’t get a funeral, and about what a town will trade to keep four hundred jobs.
Quarries have always fascinated me. They’re places where the ground is cut open and the machines never really sleep, and I kept wondering what a place like that would hide if someone wanted it to.
What pulled me in was the machinery. Brakes that fail. Radios that go dead. Machines that start when a man is still inside them. In a quarry, the ordinary tools of a working day are also the most dangerous things on site, and that gave me a kind of horror I couldn’t get from a dark alley. The danger is built into the job. All someone has to do is lean on it.
The hardest part was making the quarry itself feel dangerous, so that the machinery, the noise and the drop became as threatening as any person in the book.
I won’t tell you who dies, or how many, or who is doing the choosing. I’ll only say that the bodies mount, and that by the end Bedrock has to decide what it’s protecting: its jobs, or the truth under ten years of limestone.
Who it’s for
If you love small-town crime with real moral consequence, industrial gothic atmosphere, and detective suspense driven by grief rather than romance, this one is for you.
If you know me for Elemental Love or Torn Into the Darkness, fair warning: this is a different lane. No romantasy here, and it isn’t a comfort read. It sits on my darker shelf beside The House of Travino and Darkwater Glenn, my literary psychological thriller.
Content note: industrial accidents, sabotage and murder, mob scapegoating, workplace death, grief, and psychologically intense material.
Launch week
Pre-orders matter more than most readers realize. They tell Amazon a book is worth showing to other people. If you’ve been meaning to grab it, this week is the week.
Before you go
Bedrock Murders releases October 30, 2026. The Kindle edition is $3.99 and free with Kindle Unlimited, and paperback and hardcover arrive the same day.
Pre-order on Amazon.com | Pre-order on Amazon.ca
Can’t wait four days? Get the prologue and chapter one free
The quarry is waiting. Mind the north face.
T.D. Hilderley