Keyes Videoshop Mysteries Book 2
Pride, Prejudice, and VHS
A missing girl. A town with its story ready. And a killer who never raised his voice.
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What is Pride, Prejudice, and VHS about?
It’s December 1986, and Sam Keyes is finally getting her quiet life back by ringing up holiday rentals at Keyes Video, only two months removed from the attack that nearly killed her in her own basement. Then her sister Ash’s best friend, sixteen-year-old Mandy Montgomery—the only openly gay teen in Lake Edwina High—disappears without a word to anyone, including her girlfriend.
Days later, her body turns up in Robinwood Park, and the town already has its answer ready: a stranger passing through, a scandalous lifestyle, the wrong kind of girl making the wrong kind of enemies. Sam isn’t buying it. Neither is Mandy’s journal, once Sam finally works up the nerve to read it and finds a coded map of a household where the real danger never had to raise its voice.
With Detective Barnes chasing a story that doesn’t add up, the American Faith and Families Association turning Mandy’s death into a sermon, and Benji pulling threads through the BBS network late into the night, Sam has to decide how far she’s willing to go to make Lake Edwina tell the truth about one of its own…even when the truth lives behind a very ordinary front door.
Because in Lake Edwina, the most dangerous secrets are the ones the whole neighborhood has agreed not to see.
Read an excerpt from Pride, Prejudice, and VHS
From Chapter 1
The bell above the door hadn’t stopped ringing for the better part of two hours.
Sam worked the counter with a familiar easy rhythm, her fingers skating across the card file while she tracked four conversations at once. Outside, Edwina Plaza’s parking lot was busier than it had been in months, everyone squeezing errands between turkey leftovers and tinsel, arms loaded with shopping bags from the Twin Pines Mall. It was the first week of December and already everyone was in the holiday mindset of buying and eating and arguing with family.
“Mrs. Stephens, we just got Cocoon back this morning.” Sam held up the clamshell case. “Fresh return.”
“Oh, that’s the one with the swimming pool?” The old woman pressed her hands together. “Donald will love it. He swims at the Y, you know.”
“So you’ve mentioned.” Sam smiled and slid it across the counter. “Every week since August.”
Mrs. Stephens beamed and didn’t register the gentle ribbing at all.
The bell rang again. Chad shouldered through the door with his hands in his jacket pockets and a girl Sam didn’t recognize hanging off his elbow—pretty, with spiral-permed hair and a Benetton scarf looped twice around her neck. Becky. Had to be. Jessie had mentioned her during their day-after-Thanksgiving retreat to Sam’s basement, briefly and flatly, the way you mention a mild inconvenience. Sam still wasn’t sure why Jessie had broken up with him, other than the fact that her friend did not seem too eager to get serious with anyone. Chad, at least, had recovered pretty quickly.
“Hey, Sam.” Chad steered his new girlfriend toward the New Releases wall, not quite meeting Sam’s eyes. “Busy today.”
“December.” Sam kept her voice bright. “The universal excuse for everything.”
Becky pretended she had not heard Sam talk at all and tugged his sleeve toward the comedy section. He followed without protest.
Rom-com lead, Sam thought. Charming but directionless. Sequel dependent entirely on who he’s standing next to.