THE DEAD BELL

Some warnings come too late

“This excellent debut does not disappoint”

Philip Margolin, New York Times Best Selling author of
A Matter of Life and Death

Read an Excerpt from the Book

In Lake Forest, money buys silence.
Until someone rings the dead bell.

Faith Wesley was untouchable: a pillar of Lake Forest society, married into power, protected by reputation.
Then she’s found in her own garden, garrotted with chilling precision, and the evidence is already washing away.

Detective Tom Edison is called in to solve what the town wants forgotten. But the deeper he digs into the Wesley family’s privileged world, the more the case begins to dig into him.

Tom is already fractured: haunted by a childhood accident that never stopped replaying in his head and freshly abandoned by the only person who ever tried to keep him steady.

When an attraction to a close Wesley family friend pulls him off balance, and Internal Affairs turns its attention on him, Tom realizes he’s not just chasing a killer.

He’s walking straight into the crosshairs of the most powerful people in Illinois, a corrupt department, and a murder the city buried decades ago.

To catch Faith Wesley’s killer, Tom will have to confront the one thing he’s spent his life avoiding:

His own ghosts.

If you love crime thrillers where the investigation is dangerous, the secrets are generational, and justice has a price, The Dead Bell is your next late night read.

Grab your copy today

Praised by Critics and Readers Alike

The Dead Bell is a compelling literary thriller in the same tradition as James Crumley, Scott Turow and Graham Greene. Reid Winslow blends psychological insight, deft prose and plot twists to create an immersive novel. New York Times best-selling author Dave Margolin called the book “An excellent debut that does not disappoint”.

Excellent First Book! I thoroughly enjoyed this read! The descriptions were amazing and brought you right into the scene and into the Tom’s mind. The character development was particularly interesting.

Each personality shone through and left nothing to the imagination.
I would highly recommend this book and look forward to more novels by Reid Winslow.

Karen Wackrow

What You’ll Get

A dark, propulsive thriller set inside the gilded world of Lake Forest society – where old money, departmental corruption, and a decades-old buried murder collide.

Written by a former prosecutor who knows exactly how justice bends, The Dead Bell delivers procedural authenticity, psychological depth, and a detective whose personal unravelling is as gripping as the case itself.

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Perfect For Readers Who Love

Crime thrillers where the investigation is as dangerous as the killer
Morally complex protagonists haunted by their past
Legal and institutional corruption that feels chillingly real
Slow-burn tension that builds to a reckoning you didn’t see coming
Stories where privilege and power obstruct justice – until they can’t

WHAT READERS SAY

E Mariner

Awesome first novel. This was a gripping tale, many-layered, and very well written. Especially rich in character development, the story carried me along and never lost me through some very dark, complicated, and yet dismally credible, scenes.

Winslow maintains a well crafted balance between the here-and-now of its central character’s troubled personal life and his dogged persistence as a forensic detective under pressure not to ask too many questions, interwoven with scenes from characters’ remembered pasts – evocative memories that themselves develop in very interesting ways, as they face the unintended consequences of things they had done, or suffered, or concealed in their various pasts.

The story comes to a dangerous and thrilling climax, followed by a very moving resolution. What I appreciated most of all was Winsow’s unsentimental exploration of all his main characters’ motives and relationships. This is a very accomplished first novel, and I look forward to reading the next (for which what seems to be a trailer is appended to the paperback).

S. Haines

If you’re a crime fiction fan – read this book. I consider myself a connoisseur of crime fiction and have read most everything by Michael Connelly, Richard Price and Donna Leon. I mention these writers primarily because their characters are complex yet believable human beings. Their characters and story lines survive the bs filter I constantly run in the background. The Dead Bell definitely does the same. I highly recommend it for crime fiction fans and/or observers of human nature.

Аmazon Customer

A page-turner with a memorable cast. The Dead Bell is an engaging whodunit with a memorable cast of well-drawn characters. Author Reid Winslow is also adept at creating a cinematic sense of place from the very first sentences: “That year, the ghosts arrived. As far back as I could remember, the hot months of summer were spent in large rubber rings suspended in the cool water of Springfield Lake.”

This opening scene, with a bunch of kids hanging out on what at first seems an ordinary summer day quickly evolves into tragedy and mystery – a mystery with many twists and turns as the story unfolds.

A great read and hard to put down. I look forward to more from this author!

Karen Wackrow

Excellent First Book! I thoroughly enjoyed this read! The descriptions were amazing and brought you right into the scene and into the Tom’s mind.

The character development was particularly interesting. Each personality shone through and left nothing to the imagination.

I would highly recommend this book and look forward to more novels by Reid Winslow

THE DEAD BELL