“A truly exceptional detective and a first-rate supporting cast.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Join Larkin, Ed, Anni, and Elliott as they solve a cruise-ship mystery!
After spending her summer solving murders and staging Shakespeare, Larkin Day is ready for a vacation. When her best friend Anni invites Larkin to join her on a themed cruise for tabletop gamers and sci-fi and fantasy fans—as well as mathematicians, magicians, musicians, and anyone who wants to spend a week relaxing in the Caribbean—Larkin says "Bon voyage!"
Although Larkin considers herself more of a theater geek than a nerd, she quickly finds herself bonding with the other passengers. So does Larkin's boyfriend Ed, who finds a community of Black nerds who are more than eager to have him on board. Anni and her boyfriend Elliott, who have taken this cruise before, assure Larkin that it is statistically unlikely for there to be any murders aboard ship.
"Most cruise ships have a morgue, of course," Anni explains, "just in case there's an accidental death."
That's why, when popular fantasy author Adamantine Darcy stops making appearances on deck—and then stops making appearances altogether—people assume the death is accidental. Adamantine was 80 years old, after all. She was also 80 pages away from finishing the final book in her best-selling series, The Time Tangent Gentleman.
"It's a tragedy," Anni says, "but not a murder."
Until Larkin discovers that Adamantine's body is missing its head.
“Nicole Dieker uses a sharp eye for detail and a deft hand with characters to craft a fun, surprising mystery that’s sure to entertain in Murder on the Nerd Cruise.”
—IndieReader
“A truly exceptional detective and a first-rate supporting cast.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Nicole Dieker is a writer, teacher, and musician. She began her writing career as a full-time freelancer with a focus on personal finance and habit formation; she launched her fiction career with The Biographies of Ordinary People, a definitely-not-autobiographical novel that follows three sisters from 1989 to 2016.
Dieker writes the Larkin Day mystery series. She also maintains an active freelance career; her work has appeared in Vox, Morning Brew, Lifehacker, Bankrate, Haven Life, Popular Science, and more. Dieker spent five years as writer and editor for The Billfold, a personal finance blog where people had honest conversations about money.
Dieker lives in Quincy, Illinois with the great love of her life, his piano, and their garden.
A cozy-comedy-nerdy-mathy-theater-geeky mystery series with a lot of jokes and a few scares.
View the Larkin Day Mystery Series.