Books

The Merritt Franklin novels

Historical crime fiction where evidence matters, memory is imperfect, and the past rarely stays where people put it.

Cover of Every Past Has a Name: A Merritt Franklin Novel by K.A. LeVan

Book One • Available Now

Every Past Has a Name

Georgia, 1978. Private investigator Lewis Pike is found shot and bound in an abandoned textile mill. The evidence seems to point to Caleb Ward, a damaged Vietnam veteran with a violent past and a missing night.

GBI Special Agent Merritt Franklin sees a different possibility: the scene has been arranged to tell investigators whom to blame. Pike had been following the remains of a classified 1968 operation, and the deeper Franklin looks, the less the official record agrees with the evidence that survived.

The investigation leads through forged medical records, wartime guilt, a powerful local veterans institution, and the question at the center of every cold record: who benefited when the story became official?

First edition: September 21, 2026Kindle ASIN B0HJ9195TCPaperback ISBN 979-8-9980584-0-0Hardcover ISBN 979-8-9980584-1-7Paperback ASIN B0HJHBRJT6Hardcover ASIN B0HKMN7JX8

Coming next

Merritt Franklin • Book Two

Book Two is currently in development. Reader updates will be posted here as publication plans take shape.

No spoilers. We’re keeping the public description deliberately restrained while the novel is being written.