The Orange Door

The story

Behind a row of orange doors at a roadside motel in rural Michigan, a woman and a man are found shot in Room 28. The purse on the nightstand belongs to Linda Ferris, a long way from home and nowhere she was supposed to be.

Her husband Eddie, a semi-retired financial consultant, has spent twenty-two years managing Linda the way he manages a portfolio. He is calm on the telephone. He is calm at the funeral. He is calm when the detectives come back a second time, and that composure is the first thing about him that does not add up.

Detective Ray Sutton has worked homicide for more than thirty years and has been catastrophically certain exactly once. His partner, Carla Voss, hears something in the Ferris marriage no evidence sheet can hold, because she lived inside it once. And Angela Reyes, who runs a women’s shelter, has decided she will not be careful this time. She starts asking her own questions, well outside the law, and gets closer to Eddie Ferris than anyone should.

Everyone working this case is running on a story they believe. Every one of those stories is missing the same piece.

For readers who like

• Police procedurals with detectives who carry their mistakes
• Fair-play mysteries: every clue is on the page before the answer is
• Character-deep crime fiction, told in part by the man who did it
• Stories that take coercive control seriously

About the author

Jason Ashlock was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and lived in Michigan his whole life before moving to Easley, South Carolina. He writes suspenseful mystery fiction built on atmosphere, buried secrets and patient investigations, and children’s books about imagination, adventure and humor. The Orange Door is his first Sutton and Voss mystery.

285 pages · Published September 7, 2026 · ISBN 979-8172574320 · Press and review copies: hello@skylockmedia.com