The Red Letter

The Red Letter is a 2025 psychological crime thriller by Daniel G. Miller, the second book featuring private investigator Hazel Cho after The Orphanage by the Lake.

Hazel finally has the life she wanted: a boutique investigation firm that is doing well, a relationship that is working, and a mother who seems, improbably, impressed. Then the NYPD finds a beloved neighbourhood priest dead, with a red letter left beside the body.

Hazel takes the case as a favour to an old friend and discovers the priest was not the first recent victim to receive a red letter. One of the others has ties to a psychopath from a chapter of her life she thought she had closed. The letters keep coming, and each one is followed by a killing stranger than the last.

As Hazel narrows in on the killer, the killer narrows in on her, and she starts to question what she knows about the people closest to her.