Roll 41

A dead father.
Four photographs.
One roll of film that should never have existed.

Julian Rourke has spent ten years trying to forget Hatchett Falls, the small Vermont town where his mother died and his father stopped telling the truth.

Then, after his father's death, a package arrives.

Inside are four black-and-white photographs: a bridge under construction, a young woman outside a diner, an official document, and Julian as a child beside the mother he lost. No explanation. No apology. Only a note leading him back to his father's abandoned camera studio.

In the darkroom, Julian discovers Roll 41 - a hidden strip of negatives connected to a decades-old bridge project, a buried cover-up, and the death that destroyed his family.

The deeper he follows the trail, the clearer it becomes: his father was not silent because he knew nothing.

He was silent because he knew too much.

Now the people who protected the lie are still watching, and Julian must decide whether exposing the truth is worth becoming its next victim.

Roll 41 is a standalone small-town conspiracy thriller about family secrets, buried evidence, and the photographs that refuse to stay hidden.

From Rourke Vale, author of The Fifty-Fourth.