Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock

Five writers. One prize. One killer.
Jacey Darbon should be worrying about rent, self‑doubt, and an acceptance speech she's convinced she doesn't deserve. Instead, she's dragged into a chilling game that turns a literary award into a psychological battleground—where clues are coded, identities are hidden, and murder is real.

With the discovery of the first dead body, fiction collapses into reality and the police begin to circle. Trapped between loyalty and truth, hunted by suspicion, and haunted by the consequences of past events, Jacey must unravel the game before it destroys her—or claims its next victim.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock is a genre-bending crime novel where fiction and reality collide. Five writers, each shortlisted for the Poison Ink Crime Novel Award, are drawn into a sinister game orchestrated by the mysterious Émile. The rules are simple: determine which one of them has written their real crime into their own book. As the writers trade clues and accusations through a cryptic messaging app, the stakes escalate from literary rivalry to deadly peril.