Big Name Fan

Book 1: TV Detectives Novel

by Ruthie Knox, Annie Mare

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Female Sleuths; Romantic Suspense

Synopsis

When two A-list celebrities famous for their on-screen chemistry as TV detectives (think: sapphic Mulder and Scully, or queer Rizzoli and Isles) are reunited to investigate a real-life Hollywood murder, fans who have been ‘shipping the leading ladies for years might just get the ending they’ve always wanted . . .

Bexley Simon and Sam Farmer aren’t detectives, but they play them on TV. Well, played, past tense. The iconic cult hit that was Craven’s Daughter ended five years ago, and their friendship died along with it. Fans were disappointed that the pair’s legendary chemistry went unfulfilled—and other fans were crushed that the actual spark between actresses Bex and Sam didn’t pay off, either. The network never intended for two women to get romantic, in life or onscreen, despite the fans. But the bigger tragedy was the loss of their dear friend, makeup artist Jen Arnot, whose accidental death cast a pall over the series’ last episodes.

Now the network has decided on a reunion special, and Bex and Sam are thrust together once more as hosts of a rewatch podcast that will feature favorite episodes. Their first guest—a megawatt star who played a murder victim early on—drops a bombshell. Among the millions of pixels of fanfic written about the show online, one truly prolific author, known in the fiction world as the show’s Big Name Fan, was an insider, almost certainly someone from the cast or crew.

As the podcast moves along—and the spark between Bex and Sam threatens to burn down the studio—the pair realize they’re faced with two actual mysteries: Who is their Big Name Fan? And was Jen’s death an accident, or did someone want her dead? Sifting through clues as they question cast and crew, the duo will need to separate fact from fiction as they make their personal partnership into an unmistakable
canon . . .
 

Release date: February 25, 2025

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

There was the infamous balcony.

The first time Bexley Simon stood on it, lit from every direction, her palms damp as she clutched its faux wrought-iron railing in both hands, she’d had one chance left to fake it till she made it. She’d thought her heart might burst from worrying that everyone on this soundstage could tell.

Her footsteps echoed in the empty television studio. Someone had turned on a few can lights. They cast dim pools of yellowish illumination on the cramped spaces of the Craven’s Daughter set, which had been pulled from the metaphoric mothballs of Cineline Studios on the whim of men in suits who felt that five years off the air was a milestone worthy of a cheesy reunion special.

There was the hallway with its rows of false doors.

Here was the wood-paneled office of PI Cora Banks, a woman Bex hadn’t been since the show wrapped.

She turned in a slow circle, finally resting her eyes on the desk with its green banker’s lamp discreetly bolted to the scarred wood surface. She knew just where there was a nick in the heavy brass base of that lamp that could catch a thread in her costume and rip it if she wasn’t careful.

She rubbed the nick with her finger.

“I can see now why you didn’t consider yourself father material.” Bex spoke the opening line of the pilot aloud, remembering how the desk had been dressed for the episode with teetering stacks of paper, knocked-over coffee cups, and crushed fast-food containers. She could still feel the bite at her waist where the sound tech had shoved a microphone’s battery pack between her skin and the extremely tight waistband of her flippy pink skirt.

For six years, Bex had played sunny former kindergarten teacher Cora Banks, who tracked down her absent father, Joe Craven, with a DNA test just in time to learn he’d died—but he’d left her his detective agency. Naturally, the cause of his death was the first mystery tackled by Craven’s Daughter’s newly minted investigator.

That was eleven years ago now. Bex had been as young and green as the kindergarten teacher she played. Her bright red curls and fresh face had hardly needed to be touched by hair and makeup.

A loud, hollow knock made her jump and whip around. The older of Bex’s two younger sisters gave her a tiny wave. “Isn’t it the most haunting thing ever to see it resurrected like this?” Frankie wore her preferred all-black uniform of jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt, and boots, with the addition of a headset flattening the halo of short brown curls that always reminded Bex painfully of their late mother. The show Frankie worked for as a production assistant, Timber Creek Farm, filmed in a soundstage just down the hall in the same wing of the Cineline studio building. It was likely she had dropped by Stage 46 to see if Bex would really show up for the meeting that studio head Niels Shaughnessy had arranged for her in this oppressively nostalgic setting.

“Haunting?” Bex asked.

“It’s so dim and cramped. Full of dark corners. But maybe it just feels that way because I’ve spent two years on Timber Creek Farm with the key light cranked all the way up.”

“It’s dim, I’ll give you that, but I don’t know if it’s haunted.” As Bex said this, she caught a glimpse of the pebbled glass door panel, with its chipped gold-and-red letters reading CRAVEN INVESTIGATIONS, and got goosebumps from her scalp to the soles of her feet.

Maybe it was a little haunted.

“Some of us came to take a look yesterday,” Frankie said. “We heard they’d pulled the set out of storage to get ready for the reunion. Did you know none of the pieces has ever been recycled for other sets? They must’ve archived it all for an installation or studio tour at some point.”

“No doubt.”

Frankie sank into one of the leather-padded metal chairs. “It wasn’t my idea to sneak in here, but a bunch of the crew are part of your delirious fandom. I showed everyone where I’d carved my initials into the baseboard of the hallway set and told them stories about you and Sam that led to rounds of free beers and tacos, so thank you for that.”

Bex laughed. “One of the many perks of being my sister, I’m sure.”

“I don’t know about perks. Vic says ever since that last syndication deal with yet another streamer, everybody on campus has started wearing those faux-vintage Craven T-shirts. Now your face is everywhere she goes.”

“And here she thought she’d finally escaped us.” Bex and Frankie’s younger sister, Vic, was in her second year at UC–Davis.

Bex had seen the T-shirts. There were so, so many with Cora and her partner, Henri. Bex and Sam. She’d lost track of the licensing deals long ago, and it didn’t surprise her anymore when she ran across a mug with a Craven’s Daughter catchphrase on it or a beach towel with Henri and Cora standing under the show’s titling. “Vic should be grateful. That syndication bonus is going to pay for her to go to vet school in a few years, and probably open her first clinic.”

“Sure, but she can be grateful at the same time she’s annoyed at being stalked by your visage. They’re not mutually exclusive.” Frankie leaned forward. “Speaking of your visage, you know what I saw the other day? One of those BEFORE THEY WERE FAMOUS lists on the Internet. There was a picture of you after you won your first Tony, crowded into a pizza place in Manhattan with a bunch of other people in evening gowns. You were pretending to bite into the award.”

Bex did the mental math. She’d been barely older than Frankie. That night in New York was the culmination of three heady years of lucky breaks and two long-running shows, the second on Broadway. Bex’s life was tops. Every moment felt like a solo belted out under a spotlight right before intermission.

But then she’d gotten a middle-of-the-night phone call that dropped the curtains and trapped her in a suffocating darkness.

Her parents were suddenly, cruelly gone, wiped from existence by a traffic accident on Highway 270. They’d been on their way home to the Dutch colonial in Columbus, Ohio, where they lived with Bex’s two much-younger sisters—Victoria only five years old, and Franklynn just turned ten.

Bex adored her sisters, and because she couldn’t imagine abandoning them to spend the rest of their childhoods subject to the less-than-tender ministrations of the indifferent alcoholic aunt who was the only other candidate to be their guardian, she had stepped into the role. She’d moved Frankie and Vic to Los Angeles, where she leveraged her Tony so hard, she was surprised the metal didn’t crack. She got herself a fancy Hollywood agent and manager and told them she wanted the lead on a sitcom or weekly drama. She would settle for nothing less than an everyday acting job with a regular paycheck and a scheduled seasonal hiatus.

There wasn’t a bottomless amount of money from the estate and the life insurance payout, but there was enough for two years’ bills and groceries. Bex auditioned and studied and networked and auditioned some more. Anytime there was a lull, she called her agent and begged. After two failed pilots, the third one brought her lucky streak back.

She could admit she’d been typecast for the part of Cora Banks. The casting call described Cora as irrepressible and tireless, the unjaded girl next door whose youth means she’s constantly underestimated. That was Bex.

At least, it had been.

“I’ve never seen that picture before,” she told Frankie. “Did my skin look as good as yours? Because I honestly can’t remember what that’s like.”

“Sam was on the list, too. From when she was at Yale Drama, a production of Hamlet. I linked it to her, and then she texted me a whole bunch of her own pictures from that show. So many.” Frankie pulled her giant phone out of one of her pockets. “Want me to show you?”

“Those, I’ve seen.” Bex had looked at them years ago, sitting on the floor of Sam’s living room, sharing a pour of whiskey in a crystal highball glass, comparing their early show business stories and pretending they didn’t want to taste whiskey from each other’s mouths.

Frankie pulled her boots up onto the seat of the chair and wrapped her arms around her knees. “In case you’re wondering why I’m bringing up your libertine Broadway era, it’s because of this.” She flicked a finger toward the PI desk. “Because, in my opinion, you’d be smart to think long and hard about the choices you were making back when you still made choices, before Hollywood got its hooks in you. Is this really what you want to be doing?”

Well, shit. Bex’s sister had shown up with an agenda. One might call it an irrepressible, tireless, unjaded agenda.

Frankie was her housemate. They’d already had half a dozen different versions of this conversation in the days since Bex told her sister she was being considered for the lead role in a new Cineline ensemble medical drama called Venice Memorial.

After Craven’s Daughter, Bex had sworn off TV serials in favor of returning to singing and dancing on Broadway, as well as taking a few thought-provoking roles in the kinds of films that premiered at Sundance. Bex loved theater and movies. They felt big enough to contain her. She’d thought it was her time, finally, to get back to the life she’d just started to claim when her parents died.

Her plan was a good one, too. It brought her critical acclaim, awards, money. She’d earned the elusive higher echelon of fame and the respect that came with it.

The trouble was that ever since Bex lost Craven’s Daughter, every part of her life but her career had gone off the rails. She missed the show that had given her and her sisters a predictable routine, people they loved, life-changing paychecks, and the closest thing Hollywood offered to stability. A home, almost. She missed the easy connection she used to feel to her sisters, even as they bickered and bitched and yelled and cried their way through the tribulations of Simon adolescence. She missed feeling like a family, one that wasn’t scattered to four corners with nothing but a group chat to see them through.

And Sam, the part of her that wasn’t about stability, plans, lists, and family responsibility whispered, furiously. Sam, Sam, Sam.

“No comment,” she told Frankie. Because she couldn’t tell her, It’s too late for me to get anything I really want.

“To be clear,” Frankie said, “I think you’re making a colossal mistake. Not so much because you agreed to do the reunion special, but because you agreed to Niels Shaughnessy’s plan to get Sam to do the reunion special when you and I both know she doesn’t want to.”

She and Frankie hadn’t seen a lot of each other recently. They didn’t talk as much as they used to before Vic went away to college, much less confide in each other. The longer stretches of silence and the uptick in small arguments had been getting uncomfortable.

“Again, I don’t care to—”

“Why would she want to?” Frankie interrupted. “Why? Why? Sam is literally printing money at this point, taking juicy parts other actors would kill for. She walked off this set at the end of season six without telling anyone she wasn’t ever coming back, without doing a series finale if there even was a script written—which, let me tell you, a lot of the water-cooler gossip around here has been obsessed with the mystery of the missing script the past couple weeks, oh my God—”

“Frankie!” Bex knew where this rant was headed, and she didn’t want to hear it.

“—but what I’m actually hung up on is everything you’re willing to give up to someone like Shaughnessy. You know your situation isn’t the same as when you got hired on Craven’s Daughter with no acting credits and he was the man upstairs, right? He would be a fool not to cast you as the lead in Venice Memorial. But instead of telling him to sign whatever contract your people write or kiss your ass goodbye, you’re giving him the Craven reunion special he wants. And you’re agreeing to host a six-episode rewatch podcast before the special in order to build up enthusiasm for the reunion. And you’re giving him Sam’s cooperation, which he can’t possibly get except through you, even though you and Sam are estranged—”

“Not estranged.” Bex’s stomach flipped over the word.

“—just so Shaughnessy can feel like a big man who gets to audit you all over again and decide if you’re good enough for him to put back on TV. I know why he wants it. He wants his ratings, and he wants to feel like he’s God on a cloud, poking out his finger to bring those ratings to life.” Frankie’s color was high, her eyes burning with the injustice of what Bex was permitting to happen. “But you agreed to come on this set and take a meeting that could be an email with Sam Farmer, who you miss desperately but haven’t really talked to in years, to convince her to do this reunion, just so a network asshole can see if you’ll still dance when he hits a drum. And you will. You always do, Bex. I just want to know why.”

For you. For you. Bex’s hands were in fists. Remember when there were family dinners every night? I don’t want to sing a farewell review on Broadway when I’m ninety and my sisters aren’t in the audience because I abandoned them the moment they didn’t need me to sign school permission slips anymore.

But she didn’t say any of that. The one time she’d tried, it had precipitated a fight in which Frankie told her, with an ice-cold blade in her voice, Lie to yourself about what you want, but don’t pretend it’s my fault.

Bex took a deep breath of Stage 46. It smelled the same, like the cloudy pink cleaner they used on the floors and burned coffee from the craft services table. Of course it was the same, in every way that counted. This was the world where Frankie had grown up. She’d done an internship on this very soundstage. Frankie understood the situation as well as Bex did. Probably better.

But Bex had a plan. It was the only plan she’d been able to think of that would fix the parts of her life that felt like they’d spun out of control, and therefore it was the best plan.

“Bex.”

“Stop.”

“Sam is going to be here any minute. It’s hard for me to believe she would even agree to come to this dusty soundstage to have a business meeting when she knows what Cineline wants as well as we do. Which means she’s willing to do something genuinely gruesome in order to talk to you. Really, really talk to you. I don’t want to believe you’re going to use this opportunity just to feed her lines from the suits upstairs.”

Bex didn’t want to believe that, either.

Technically, she and Sam were not estranged. The last season of Craven’s Daughter had been incredibly hard to trudge through for everyone. She and Sam had both worked nonstop since the end of the show, and they were frequently out of town for long periods, but they exchanged the occasional greeting over text. There had been a few brief and awkward phone calls. Christmas cards. Sam had maintained friendships with Frankie and Vic, which meant Bex heard things from her sisters about how Sam was doing and, she assumed, vice versa. If she and Sam were to run into each other at the Culver City Whole Foods, Bex was certain they would say hello. Sam would probably point out a quiet corner to talk for a few minutes where they would be less likely to cause an international incident for the very fact of standing next to each other.

But they weren’t Sam and Bex anymore. Whatever “Sam and Bex” had ever been. And wasn’t that lack of definition their whole problem?

Bex looked past the desk to the big window that opened onto the balcony. “The truth, Frankie? I’m afraid.” She started to say something else, but her throat caught, making her eyes water. “Maybe you’re right about all of it, but I’m mostly afraid because I loved Craven’s Daughter so much, and the way things ended was awful.”

Her sister followed the direction of Bex’s gaze, and the frown between her eyebrows deepened. “Jen, you mean.”

They’d lost their parents, and then after they’d finally gotten settled in their new lives after five steady, predictable seasons of Craven’s Daughter, another sudden loss had befallen them—this time of Jen Arnot, the makeup artist who’d been the girls’ favorite crew member and Bex and Sam’s friend—everyone’s friend—who fell to her death from the real-life Chicago balcony that existed in replica on the Craven’s Daughter set.

“When I came over here with my work friends to look at the set, they took pictures on the balcony,” Frankie said. “That was rough.”

“I’m sorry.”

The words fell flat in the empty space between them. Bex wished she had something better to tell her sister, but I’m sorry was all she had. I’m sorry Mom isn’t here. I’m sorry Dad couldn’t see this. I’m sorry Jen’s gone. I’m sorry Sam doesn’t come around like she used to, but you go ahead and have dinner with her. I’m sorry.

“I know.” Frankie blinked and ran her fingers through her curls. “But you did say yes to the network. To Shaughnessy. Without consulting or informing me and Vic. You want to do something for us? With us? Then include us.”

Bex willed the heat in her cheeks away. She didn’t want to talk to Sam on the heels of another fight with Frankie. “I know you snuck out to see me because you care, but you must need to go back to work.”

“I do.” Frankie dropped her legs to the ground and sat up, directing her intensity at Bex. It was a lot of intensity. She and Frankie were alike in this, with the difference that Frankie had never worried about pleasing people, which made her a great deal scarier than Bex could hope to be. “Tell me, though. You’re here, completely alone.” Frankie gestured at the expanse of empty soundstage beyond them. “It’s dark past the edge of the set. Say I never appeared. It’s just you, waiting. Until Sam comes in. Sam. In one of her outfits. Right there.” Frankie pointed at the open doorway. “What happens next? What exactly are you anticipating?”

Bex searched for an answer. In the time since she’d agreed to Niels’s terms, she’d avoided thinking about everything Frankie had hit her with by focusing on the Craven’s Daughter fans, who had been clamoring for a reunion almost since the show came to an end. These were people who had shipped PI Cora Banks and Agent Henri Shannon hard without getting to see that ship sail. Even though they never would be able to watch their finale or find out the secret reason Henri left the FBI in a cloud of disgrace, at least they could see the cast reunited against the backdrop of the set, answering questions posed by the show’s most celebrated guest stars.

But the fans weren’t why she’d agreed to come, and now Sam could hit her with all the same arguments Frankie had, plus introduce all the complications of the other ship that never sailed.

Sam and Bex.

She spun the gold stud in her earlobe until she noticed her sister watching. The earrings had belonged to their mother. Bex wore them for good luck and touched them too much when she felt anxious. Frankie knew this, damn it.

“I don’t have a plan for Sam,” she admitted.

Frankie gasped and put both palms on her cheeks.

That was fair. Bex was a planner. She had plans for everything. Frankie knew this, too.

When Frankie spoke again, her voice was thick. “It’ll be okay in the end. If it’s not, it’s not the end.”

That was what Bex had told her sisters, over and over again through their years together.

Frankie stood and gave Bex an unexpected hug, and standing in the embrace of her wiry arms, Bex almost said that they should leave together. She would follow Frankie to the soundstage where she worked and hide in bright and sunny and soothingly imaginary Timber Creek, California. Do a guest spot. Anything.

But then she heard high heels clicking against the 1950s-era linoleum in the hallway outside the studio.

Frankie’s brown eyes went comically round. “I’ve got to go.”

“Wait!” Bex whispered as the heels came closer. “You’re not going to stay and say hi?”

“Fuck, no!” She was already clear of the set, looking back over her shoulder as she hustled through the empty fourth wall and off toward the dressing rooms. Exiting that way, she wouldn’t encounter Sam. “I don’t handle palpable discomfort well. It’s like when I have dairy. Call me later! Break a leg!”

“Jesus,” Bex said to herself. The tapping of the heels was louder now. It had to be Sam. No one else walked like that.

Bex tried to find a natural way to hold her body. She pulled her hair over one shoulder, then the other. Then she sat on the desk again and crossed her ankles. Why had she worn this stupid jumpsuit? No one who was five foot two in heels should wear a jumpsuit, even setting aside the fact that wearing a jumpsuit meant that every time you peed, you had to practically strip naked. She’d only put it on because she’d already spent way too long trying to decide what to wear, and the jumpsuit—black, shiny, real fashion in every way, complete with a gold zipper—was the least Bex-like outfit in her closet.

For some reason, she hadn’t wanted to be too Bex-like around Sam. If she imagined showing up in Capezio ultrasoft dance tights and one of her stepdad’s decades-old OSU sweatshirts with the neckline cut out of it, it felt too much like being naked.

Not that she was trying to avoid being naked with Sam. That wasn’t what she was thinking either.

Bex sucked in a breath and put her finger through the gold ring on the zipper of her jumpsuit, fiddling nervously as the heels made their way across the studio floor.

Which was how she ended up with the end of her index finger extremely stuck in the gold ring and—in the panic of trying to yank it out—accidentally unzipping herself halfway to her navel just as Sam entered the office segment of the set.

“Yikes.” Sam stopped in the doorway.

Bex yanked up the zipper and freed her finger, catching a lock of the hair she’d draped over her shoulder and ripping it out in the process. “Fuck!”

“Do you need a minute?” Sam smiled the way she always had, like a smile took twenty years to fully develop on a person’s face. She crossed her arms and leaned in the doorway, making various expensive suit fabrics and thin gold bangles attractively drape and clink.

“I was checking a rash,” Bex said, and then actually died. Her heart stopped, she took her last breath, and she watched her body sink to the floor from above, where she was floating toward the light.

She consoled herself that she had been spared an awkward first meeting with Sam by instead crashing right into a humiliating one.

Sam did not seem to notice Bex’s death, so Bex had to come up with more words. “I was not. Doing that. I don’t have a rash. I don’t know if I have ever had a rash.” She wasn’t breathing, she realized. “Anywhere.”

Sam’s high-waisted black suit pants were embroidered with red poppies the size of dinner plates. She didn’t have a shirt on, just a bra under the jacket. Her honey blond hair wound around her head in an intricate crown of braids. It was two o’clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday.

Sam was still Sam.

“I believe you. I can’t imagine Bexley Simon getting so much as a hive. Where would something like that go in your day planner?” One of Sam’s beautiful caramel eyebrows lifted.

No matter how Bex tried, she could not lift just one of her eyebrows like that, but she knew there had been a time where she answered what Sam was asking with all the same coolness Sam brought to her doorstep.

“So.” Bex held Sam’s eye contact and mimicked her posture, even though Sam was standing in pointy heels, whereas Bex was perched on the desk. She had learned in an acting class at conservatory a hundred years ago that mimicking someone’s posture was a surefire way to establish dominance over the interaction. “You’re here.”

Sam cocked a hip out.

Bex did her best to lean in a manner that achieved the same laconic, cowboy-like insouciance Sam exuded.

Sam put her hand over her mouth to cover her smile, which didn’t work because Bex could see it in her cheeks and her eyes and a telltale wrinkle across the bridge of her nose. “I am.”

Bex put her hand over her own mouth, raising her eyebrows to dare Sam to call her out. “I see.”

That was when Sam started laughing. Really, genuinely laughing. It had been a very long time since Sam Farmer laughed in Bex’s presence, but nothing had changed about the way it made her feel. For a while, in the beginning, Sam was the only one who could make her laugh.

“I’ll let you pick.” Sam put her fingertips to her flushed cheek. “I can either walk out and come in again, or I can concede defeat.”

“Well.” Bex started sliding off the desk. “I have never fucking figured out how to grab the upper hand in that exercise. Effective dominance would have more . . . just more. I would feel I had gotten more-ish.”

“I wouldn’t say you’re not effective. And, mirroring or not, we both know who has the upper hand. You always do.”

Bex sighed. Had the floor always been so far away? She scooted the rest of the way to the edge of the desk, feeling for the ground with the tip of her shoe. “I told myself I wouldn’t Bex this meeting quite so hard, but honestly—motherfucker.” She whipped around at the unmistakable sound of tearing fabric, then goggled in dismay. That goddamn fucking nick in the brass had got her again. She yanked the shredded fabric out of the catch in the lamp and pulled it over her backside, recalling too late that she had put on a thong this morning. Why? She’d wanted to have a clean line under her jumpsuit! In case Sam looked and judged her for not having a clean line. Good God.

“Maybe it’s only a tiny hole.” Sam stepped forward as though to help, but Bex held up a hand. This lamp never took a minor fabric sacrifice, which meant her thong-wearing had come into play here. She reached back to confirm the worst. Her entire hand met her very bare ass.

She clamped her lips so she wouldn’t scream.

“Problem?”

“That depends,” Bex said. “On so many factors.”

“Tell you what.” Sam did a rapid visual survey of the set before her gaze settled on the same padded chair by the desk that Frankie had just vacated. “Let’s arrange ourselves more comfortably in the middle of this dark and not-at-all-creepy set. We can recenter and see how we feel.” She dropped into the . . .