“In a city that erases people with a transposed digit, one investigator was hired to find a woman who was never meant to be found.”
Duke Savage — disgraced gonzo journalist turned analog private investigator — is hired at 3 a.m. to find a missing woman. She isn't missing by accident. She's been systematically erased by a power network that operates through bureaucracy, not violence. Nobody broke the law. The law was the mechanism.
The Duke Savage Trilogy · Book 01 of 03
Three novels. One investigator. A mechanism that learns to hide.
A Duke Savage Novel
Simon J Cleary
“The city was not drowning them. It was mopping its floor.”
When the transit platform collapses in the lower sectors of Neo-Tethys, three sisters wake in the dark carrying marks that grant them new kinds of power — and start climbing toward a surface that wants its floor clean.
A debut novelist exploring how power learns to be invisible.
Simon J. Cleary is an Irish-born writer and entrepreneur. His fascination with institutional systems, public narratives, and the hidden mechanisms that shape modern life informed the creation of GHOSTS IN THE ASH — written across twenty-seven drafts and exploring administrative power, personal responsibility, and the cost of pursuing truth when the people closest to you are paying the price.
He didn't fully understand what he'd written until the night his wife's friends went quiet listening to it and told him: “The dry, sarcastic, notices-everything cynic — that's one hundred percent you.” GHOSTS IN THE ASH is his debut novel and the first installment in the Duke Savage trilogy.
The origin of everything that follows. The lamp that never goes out.
The house was a rental on Fontenelle Boulevard. Two bedrooms, a yard that had given up, and the same furnace that ran three months behind the weather.
The man inside the house had a daughter. Eight years old. She slept in the back bedroom with a lamp on.
The men left. The man on the floor of his hallway got up. He would require ongoing management for the next twenty-five years.
The child went back to her room. She left the lamp on.
Like what you read? The first chapter is on the house.
Read the rest — freeA working dossier on the investigator at the center of the trilogy. Compiled from case files, bar napkins, and the occasional 3 a.m. phone call.
Conversations on craft, the system, and what the city won't say out loud. Hosted by Simon J. Cleary.
Coming soon.
Episodes will appear here as they are published. Join the dispatch below to be notified when the first one drops.
Readings, panels, and the occasional workshop. To be announced.
T.B.A.
Appearances, readings, and festival dates for the Ghosts in the Ash launch will be posted here as they are confirmed. Join the dispatch below to be the first to know.
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