Virtual Book Tour & Giveaway: Dying With a Secret (Dead Detective Casefiles, #4) by TJ O'Connor

DYING WITH A SECRET

by Tj O'Connor

January 12 - February 13, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

THE DEAD DETECTIVE CASEFILES

Dying can bring out the best in people.
It can also bring out the worst of secrets.
If you want to know someone’s dirty secrets, kill them.
It works every time.

Oliver “Tuck” Tucker, the dead detective, is back—not just for another case, but from the dead—or vice versa. It all starts when a Federal Agent is killed by a mysterious force in front of dozens of witnesses—including Angel, his historian wife, and Tuck. Among the many suspects is a dark, clandestine Federal agency responsible for advanced research and weaponry, a university doctoral candidate who won’t stay dead, and the leader of a secret southern society bent on rekindling the Civil War. With the aid of a ten-year-old psychic and the spirit of Tuck’s Civil War grandmother—Sally Elizabeth Mosby—Tuck has to stay one step ahead of the Feds who are hellbent on capturing him—alive? But through all this, what’s a two-hundred-year-old lost fortune in gold got to do with dead agents, secret death rays, and rogue policemen?

DYING WITH A SECRET Trailer:

Book Details:

Genre: Paranormal Mystery, PI Cozy Mystery
Published by: Level Best Books
Publication Date: December 9, 2025
Number of Pages: 324
ISBN: 979-8898201111 (pbk)
Series: The Dead Detective Casefiles, Book 4
Book Links: Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | BookBub

The Dead Detective Casefiles

DYING TO KNOW Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

DYING FOR THE PAST Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

DYING TO TELL Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Read an excerpt:

Chapter One

Dying can bring out the best in people. It can also bring out the worst of secrets. Oh, not only about the dead—sure, that’s when everyone starts whispering about the dearly departed. No, I’m talking about the secrets of the living who are left behind. Sometimes, those people get brazen about their dastardly deeds when someone involved in those deeds dies. They don’t always keep them well hidden. Often, too, a death sheds too much light on too many people. Light others would rather not be in—like Wyle E. Coyote’s oncoming train in the tunnel. It can be too revealing for some. Blinding for others. One secret often leads to another. Another death. And by another death, I mean murder.

So, if you want to know who your friends are, or what they’re truly up to, kill one.

It works every time.

What makes me so sure? Murder is my thing. I’m a homicide cop in the historic Virginia city of Winchester. Winchester has a hell of a murder rate that most don’t know about. I know because I’ve solved more than twenty murders in the last few years alone. Well, seventeen to be precise. Three deaths were accidents and suicides—not something I tell stories about. But the other seventeen—phew, what a rush. As you can see, I’m an expert on the dead.

More about that later.

At the moment, it was a beautiful August afternoon in Winchester, Virginia. As always on these beautiful August days in Winchester, it was hot as, er, … it was hot. Luckily, instead of being in the dog days of summer, I sat in the air conditioning atop a stack of wooden crates in our local library, ogling the beautiful woman working across the room from me. Her auburn hair flowed around her shoulders like a silk veil, and her green eyes sparkled even in the dark. At thirty-eight, she had the hourglass figure a twenty-year-old would die for—and today it was wrapped in jeans and a denim shirt with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows. This lady’s charm and intelligence radiated an allure that stole my heart the moment I pulled her over for an undeserved speeding ticket back in the day. Sure, sure, it was unethical. Hey, I didn’t give her the ticket after securing a date.

Fortunately, the statute of limitations on cheesy pickup ploys expired years ago.

This lady was doing her best to ignore me—difficult as it was—though she wanted nothing more than to get lost in my affections. No, really, it’s true.

Full disclosure. This angel was formally Dr. Angela Hill Tucker, Assistant Dean and Chairwoman of History at the Mosby Center for American Studies, University of the Shenandoah Valley. Yep, my wife. Today, she was researching a new historical find in the Lower-Level Research Room at the Handley Library, a local historical landmark. The Lower Level is actually the library’s finished basement. Since it’s a classy place, they call it the Lower Level.

Angel sat at a cluttered wooden desk beside crates of documents discovered in a formerly undiscovered sub-basement at the Winchester Courthouse—another historic building. Yeah, I know, we have a lot of historic buildings in town. That’s because Winchester dates back to George Washington’s day, and we’ve played a big part in American history ever since. Anyway, she had just opened one of the six large, wooden crates to begin work. The first few items she took out were more of the same as many of the other crates—folded files tied with leather straps. There were a few land maps and surveyors’ drawings, and an old silver-plate photograph of a family standing around a horse carriage with grim, pasty faces.

Angel was in heaven—pardon the pun. She spent much of her life in rooms just like this one, doing what she was now doing—researching old stuff. Okay, it’s historically significant old stuff. The other part of her life she spent in pursuit of her real passion—trying to be a crack detective like me. Oh, I’m her real passion, too. But don’t tell her I said that. It’s our secret.

All day, I’d sat with my feet propped up on a crate, bored. I had on the same clothes as usual—blue jeans, running shoes, a blue Oxford button-down shirt, and a blue blazer. Angel once called my ensemble, ‘old guy sexy.’ I don’t know about the old guy—I’m only forty-one—but I’ll take the sexy part.

“Hey, Angel,” I said, stretching. “How about we go grab takeout?”

She ignored me. Not unusual. Not that she was so focused on her work, but because working at a small table across the room was her research assistant, Andy-somebody. She didn’t want to fluster him, so she just made believe I wasn’t around. We have this thing, you see.

“Hey, it’s a beautiful summer day. Maybe steaks on the grill and wine?”

She glanced up and gave me one of those “God, I want you” looks. Okay, maybe it was a “quiet, I’m working” look.

“Angela?” The thin, shaggy-haired assistant, Andrew Pellman, walked to the stack of crates beside her. He lifted one of the crates, grunted a little from the unexpected weight, and set it on the corner of her desk. “I’m done computerizing the inventory from crates one and two. Shall I get a head start on crate four while you finish crate three?”

“No, Andrew. We’ll keep to our process.” She saw his face melt into a pout. Me, I would have let him cry, but she was the kind soul in the family. “Oh, all right. Go ahead and begin. Follow our guidelines closely. One document at a time. Identify, inventory, and scan what you can. Photograph any that won’t stand up to the scanning process. Andrew, be careful—very careful.”

His face lit up. “Sure, Angela, I’ll be careful.”

Pellman was a meek kid in his mid-twenties. He was working on his doctoral thesis at the university, and Angel was his dissertation advisor. I didn’t like him. Not one bit. I have a sixth sense about people. When he was around, my BS meter pings like it does with politicians and faux car warranty stalkers. Andy was a new class of “some people” that I hadn’t labeled yet.

“I think you should call me Professor Tucker,” Angel said with an easy tone. “Let’s keep this professional. Okay?”

“Yes, Professor Tucker.”

“It’s not personal, Andrew.”

He shrugged. “Okay.”

Angel flipped through a document and stopped. She retrieved another and did a comparison. Finally, she looked over at Pellman. “Have you seen any references to ‘M35W?’ Do you recognize it from anything you’ve done?”

“Why?” He walked to her worktable. “Is it important?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems out of place. Like some kind of acronym or citation. Can you check your new research engine tomorrow?”

“Sure, okay. It’ll give me a good test run on my changes to the algorithm.” His face beamed. “Thank you.”

Andrew’s doctoral studies used computers to perform detailed research traditionally done by historians and doctoral students. One day, that program he wrote would likely replace those researchers with keyboards and mice—the electronic kind, not the crumb snatchers. You know, like self-checkout machines at the grocery store. You do all the work, and they charge you the same price. Then, they’ll fire five clerks who the machines replaced. Great plan, Andy. I wonder how many historians you’ll replace with your gadgets.

“Thank you, Andrew.” Her cell rang, and she took the call. “Professor Tucker.” The caller had Angel’s complete attention. I knew that because she jotted some notes and checked her watch twice—all the while continuing to ignore me. So, it must have been really important, right? “Yes, of course. I’ll be right up.”

“Professor Tucker?” Andrew asked.

She glanced over at Andrew as she tapped off the call. “We’re done for the day, Andrew.”

“Is something wrong?” he asked. “I can help.”

“No, it’s fine. I have to meet someone up in the rotunda. We’ll start again in the morning.” She began straightening her papers and stuffing files into her worn, leather briefcase.

“Who?” he asked.

I said, “Never you mind, sonny-boy. You work for her, not the other way around.” I winked at Angel. “Millennials, right?”

She hefted her briefcase. “Something to do with our Apple Harvest research.”

“Okay.” He glanced at the crates of research. “Want me to gather up your research and get it to your car? There’s an awful lot here.”

“Actually, yes. If you don’t mind.” She gave him the keypad code for her Explorer. “Leave my briefcase and the files beside it here. The rest can go in my vehicle. Please make sure it’s locked when you’re done. Thank you.”

“Sure thing, Professor Tucker.” His face lit up. “See you in the morning.”

I followed Angel through the Stewart Bell Jr. Archive Room, into the Lower Lobby, and up the stairs toward the main library entrance.

“I don’t like him, Angel. He’s shifty.”

“Shifty, Tuck?” Finally, she acknowledged me. I wore her down. “No one says ‘shifty’ anymore.”

“It’s coming back in style.”

She grinned and whispered, “Is that your detective-senses talking or because he stares at me when he thinks I’m not looking?”

“He doesn’t stare. He ogles.”

“Yes, he ogles.”

“I can get Bear to check him—”

“No, Tuck. He’s fine. I don’t like it when you’re jealous.”

Me, jealous? No. It was purely a professional irritation I felt whenever Andy was around. Truly.

We reached the first-floor hall that led into the main library rooms. There, she made her way into the rotunda at the library entrance. She stopped beside a high-back wood bench where Library Lil—the bronze statue of a young girl reading a book—sat.

A tall, thin man about thirty stepped out of one of the meeting rooms along the west hallway. He glanced around before he headed our way. He wore dark slacks and a dark sport jacket over a white, button-down dress shirt that was untucked in that new-millennial style, and penny-loafers. He strode to us and looked around his entire trip.

“That must be Special Agent Kerns with the DOD,” Angel whispered. “He called just now.”

A fed? Interested in her research? I asked her that.

“I don’t know. He said it was about my Apple Harvest research and that it was classified. Go wait somewhere.”

“I am somewhere. I’m here.”

She gave me the evil eye, so I meandered to a bench nearby.

As Kerns approached, fingers began dancing up my spine—hot, pointy fingers. I didn’t like those fingers. Every time they did the mambo up my vertebrae, something bad happened in the next few beats.

Kerns reached Angel, proffered a hand, and said something with a serious, tight expression on his face. Then, he hooked a thumb toward the main entrance doors.

Angel shook his hand and smiled faintly, a sure sign she was unsure of him.

Those fingers reached the base of my brain and squeezed…

“Angel, get down!” I lunged forward and pulled her away from Kerns, down behind Library Lil’s bench.

Kerns stood there, frozen in an eerie mist. His arms shot out sideways, and he seemed to lift onto his toes. His face contorted into a stunned, painful grimace.

“Tuck?” Angel cried. “What’s happening to him?”

Hell if I knew.

Kerns’ entire body vibrated and shuddered. He staggered backward and collapsed onto the floor, writhing. The lights above us flickered wildly and went out. The original iron, brass, and blown-glass chandelier swayed dramatically two floors overhead. Its lights flickered and went dark.

When I glanced back at Kerns lying on the floor, I cringed.

Blood flowed from his ears, nose, and mouth. It seeped from his eye sockets, where his eyeballs looked like soft-boiled eggs stewing in their sockets. His hands and fingers were dark red and bony. His face and neck had oddly sunk, and his skin looked like it had been draped over his bones as though someone had sucked the tissue and muscle from beneath. He looked like he had melted inside.

The only thing left of him was his clothes and a spreading pool of goo.

Kerns was dead, sure enough. He’d been murdered, too, right in front of Angel and a dozen people. I knew no one had seen anything. No one heard anything. No one knew anything. Me included.

Well, that’s not true. I knew something. Special Agent Kerns didn’t die of a heart attack because of a poor diet. He wasn’t killed by a sniper with a silenced rifle, a knife-throwing ninja assassin, or by an Amazonian’s blow dart. He died of something else.

What killed him, I had no idea. But it scared the life out of me.

***

Excerpt from Dying With A Secret by Tj O'Connor. Copyright 2025 by Tj O'Connor. Reproduced with permission from Tj O'Connor. All rights reserved.

 

 

Review:

5 stars!

Complex and clever new case for the ghostly detective. 

Dying With a Secret is the fourth novel in author TJ O’Connor’s unique Dead Detective Casefiles paranormal mystery series, and Tuck and Angel’s latest adventure treads pretty close to his obsession with aliens from outer space. One afternoon, when Angel is working on a newly discovered cache of letters, maps, and records from Winchester’s Civil War days, she’s called to meet with an FBI agent in the library’s main rotunda, but before he can explain the purpose of his visit, he is swiftly, violently, and invisibly attacked right before her eyes and several other witnesses, including Tuck. The man falls to the ground, dead, his body liquified from the inside out. As law enforcement scrambled to discover what happened, locking down the library, fearing a possible outbreak of an infectious disease could be the culprit, Tuck is thrown into the man’s body and experiences his last few moments. No one believes him when he describes the murder weapon as a ray gun. 

Meanwhile, Tuck is visited by the beautiful spirit of Sally Mosby, a former resident of Winchester and infamous Confederate spy. She’s seeking justice for being falsely accused and executed, and the papers Angel is working on may hold long-held secrets that could clear her name. 

Angel and Tuck are back and have settled into their unusual second chance at a life together. While Tuck is still trying to figure out this being dead thing, he’s getting more comfortable, and the description of their daily life is almost normal. Their banter is certainly lively and full of wit. They depend on a small circle of close friends and former colleagues for moral support and for information about what’s going on in Tuck’s old department. But shocking betrayals by some of their nearest and dearest left me reeling alongside the couple. 

The plot is well-paced and unfolds from multiple points of view as the disparate storylines progress. Early on, readers are aware they are related, but how, who, and why remain big unknowns. There is action and suspense galore as Detective Cal Clemens falls off the radar, and no one knows where he is. There are creepy goings-on at a local classified research facility involving children, and that kept me glued to the pages, dreading where it was going. However, the tension really ratcheted up as a group of characters navigated a treacherous underground cave system in search of a rumored lost treasure. I honestly had to remind myself to breathe as the suspense kept building and they went further and deeper, and I never guessed who the real danger was all along. 

I recommend DYING WITH A SECRET to readers of paranormal mysteries and thrillers, especially those who enjoyed the previous books in the series.

Author Bio:

Tj O’Connor is an award-winning author of mysteries and thrillers. He’s an international security consultant specializing in antiterrorism, investigations, and threat analysis—life experiences that drive his novels. With his former life as a government agent and years as a consultant, he has lived and worked around the world in places like Greece, Turkey, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, and throughout the Americas—among others. In his spare time, he’s a Harley Davidson pilot, a man-about-dogs (and now cats), and a lover of adventure, cooking, and good spirits (both kinds). He was raised in New York’s Hudson Valley and lives with his wife, Labs, and Maine Coon companions in Virginia where they raised five children who are supplying a growing tribe of grands.

Catch Up With Tj O'Connor:

tjoconnor.com
Amazon Author
Goodreads
BookBub - @tj37
Instagram - @tjoconnorauthor
Twitter/X - @Tjoconnorauthor
Facebook - @TjOConnor.Author
YouTube - @tjoconnorauthor3905

 

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and opportunities to WIN in the giveaway!

Click here to view the Tour Schedule

 

 

 

Don't Miss Out! Enter Now for Your Chance to Win!

This giveaway is hosted by Partners in Crime Tours for Tj O’Connor. See the widget for entry terms and conditions. Void where prohibited.

TEMPLATE (Copy)

Can't see the giveaway? Click Here!

Get More Great Reads at Partners In Crime Tours