The Ruin of the Watcher (Fox A

When children begin turning up in the wetlands of Palm Beach County — bound, drugged, and bearing the signature of a single predator — Detective Lieutenant Ellis “Fox” Argall knows this case is different. Not because of the evidence. Because of the smell.

A jeweled pin found at a crime scene. A perfume that makes him physically ill. Notes arriving for twenty years, numbers no one can decode. Fox has been here before — in a Boston library in 1991, at his daughter’s seventh birthday party, the night a strange man smiled at him like a snake shedding its skin and asked him to prove a monster’s innocence.

He failed then. Children are dying now.

Fox Argall holds degrees he never uses, speaks Welsh under pressure, and sees patterns other detectives miss entirely. His partner Tick reads him through a video game. His wife Grace has spent thirty years translating him to a world that doesn’t quite fit him. What they’ve built together is something the case is about to threaten — because the man Fox couldn’t stop in Boston has been watching his family ever since.

The Ruin of the Watcher is the origin story of the Fox Argall Mysteries: the book that answers the questions of the beginning.

On paper, Lieutenant Ellis Cadnon 'Fox' Argall, MD, PhD, JD is a hero. He’s handsome, wildly over-educated, eccentric, and adores his wife with epic passion. Fox's brain is neurospecial, weaving unfiltered webs of complex science with murder and a side of romance through twisty mystery threads. Our compulsive detective drags his ensemble cast on journeys through literal and figurative Florida swamps, where he leaves a trail of irritation everywhere he goes. Well, almost everywhere. He's very good at a thing or two. Obsession has its benefits.

It’s all exactly his kind of trouble.

A note on the series: The Ruin of the Watcher is the prequel for Fox Argall Mysteries. The books are numbered so the reader can fully appreciate the details of the friendships and failures as they develop, although the books are standalone mysteries and can be read in any order. The Ruin of the Watcher introduces the main cast of characters and their beginnings from the earliest days of their relationships in Columbus, Ohio as young adults. Each subsequent book brings a different murder mystery, always with the main cast, and adds interesting new characters along the way.