The Color of Death

The Color of Death (2025) is the debut legal thriller from former prosecutor Trey Gowdy and best-selling author Christopher Greyson. The novel is the first installment in the Colm Truesdale series and was an instant New York Times bestseller. The story follows Assistant District Attorney Colm Truesdale, who is on the verge of resigning after the deaths of his wife and daughter. He’s assigned to investigate the brutal murder of a young hairdresser, a case that uncovers a web of corruption involving a powerful local judge and a dangerous criminal enterprise. The novel explores themes including The Psychological Toll of Prosecution, The Lasting Nature of Grief, and The Dangers of Deception.

The novel combines the procedural authenticity of a seasoned legal insider with the pacing of a seasoned thriller writer. Gowdy drew heavily on his career as a state and federal prosecutor in South Carolina to inform the novel’s forensic strategies, courtroom mechanics, and the protagonist’s emotional burden. To shape the narrative, Gowdy collaborated with Greyson, a Wall Street Journal best-selling author known for his Jack Stratton series and his Independent Publisher Book Award-winning thriller, The Girl Who Lived (2017). The Color of Death was quickly followed by a sequel, The Sound of Regret (2026).

This guide refers to the 2025 First Edition from Fox News Books.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, death by suicide, child death, graphic violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, mental illness, suicidal ideation, and substance use.

Plot Summary

In a remote cabin, lawyer Frank Hastings is executed by two figures, JD and Knox, after they force him to write a confession for botching a trial. This murder is the first move in a revenge plot targeting those involved in the conviction of a man named Larry Stafford. JD and Knox intend to act next against the prosecutor in the case, Assistant District Attorney Colm Truesdale.

Colm is struggling with deep grief following the recent deaths of his young daughter, Jaci, and his wife, Ally. His sister-in-law, a psychiatrist named Mae, worries about his well-being. Pulled from a leave of absence, Colm is assigned to the brutal murder of Rachel Simone, a young hairdresser who was stabbed 19 times with scissors and had her hair cut off postmortem. The investigation begins with a new and inexperienced lead detective, Travis Hendrick, and focuses initially on Rachel’s volatile ex-husband, Macon Greer.

Unbeknownst to the investigators, Rachel was having an affair with a powerful trial court judge, Martin Weber. Panicked that his affair will be exposed, Martin attempts to clean his blood-spattered Audi at a self-serve car wash before taking it to a professional detail shop owned by the influential and corrupt businessman Beau Landry. Martin strikes a deal with Beau: In exchange for Martin using his judicial power to resolve a zoning issue for Beau’s real-estate development, Beau’s menacing head of security, Jean Boucher, will handle the problem. This results in Rachel’s salon being burned to the ground to destroy any evidence that Martin believes Rachel kept of their conversations. The official investigation, however, makes its own progress. An interview with Rachel’s friend and business mentor, Shauna Phillips, reveals that Rachel owned an expensive diamond tennis bracelet, suggesting that she had a wealthy benefactor. Colm begins to find solace and a potential friendship with Belle Atkins, a kind and intelligent waitress at The Junction, a diner he frequents to escape his grief.

The investigation pivots directly toward Martin. Colm’s longtime friend and colleague Captain Rick “Bones” Denton provides a tip about a witness who saw a silver coupe matching Martin’s leaving the crime scene at high speed. Travis tails the judge and photographs the tires of his Audi, which forensics match to unique tread prints found at the salon. When Colm seeks a warrant for Rachel’s phone records, Martin himself is assigned to review it and denies the request, raising Colm’s suspicions. Colm secures the warrant from another judge, Aaron Harrison, and the resulting phone data place Martin’s cell phone at the salon at the time of the murder. As the net tightens, the cover-up intensifies. Martin’s Audi is carjacked and torched, and Colm is shot at by a professional sniper in a clear warning to abandon the case. Travis then makes an important breakthrough, locating Rachel’s missing tennis bracelet in the possession of Ronald “Chew” Ward, an employee at Beau Landry’s detail shop. Chew confesses that he found the bracelet wedged in the driver’s seat of Martin’s Audi.

After Martin’s arrest, a new revelation throws the case into chaos: DNA from bloody tissues found at the crime scene is a familial match to Martin’s 18-year-old son, Lucas Weber. District Attorney Cindy Porter loses faith in Colm and replaces him with his ambitious rival, Dillon Bickler. Because his work was the last thing that gave him a sense of purpose, Colm attempts suicide by carbon-monoxide poisoning in his garage. He’s unknowingly saved by the mysterious JD, who opens the garage door because she wants to extend his suffering as part of her elaborate revenge plot. Mae discovers Colm and convinces him to voluntarily check into a mental-health facility. While there, Colm has an epiphany when a nurse’s diamond ring snags and tears her latex glove. Realizing that the killer was wearing a ring that could hold trace DNA evidence, he has Bones break him out of the facility to intervene in the preliminary hearing, which Dillon is disastrously mishandling.

In a dramatic courtroom confrontation, Colm seizes control of the hearing from a fumbling Dillon. To circumvent a legal issue that prevents Lucas and Martin from incriminating each other, Colm grants Lucas full immunity from prosecution and calls him to the stand. Through methodical questioning, Colm proves that the DNA on the tissues came from a shaving cut that Lucas sustained at home that morning; the tissues were later taken from the trash and planted at the scene. With Lucas exonerated, Martin’s lawyer calls his wife, Tiffany Weber, to the stand to provide her husband’s alibi. On cross-examination, Colm dismantles her testimony, using cell-phone data to prove that she was at the salon while her phone, programmed with an SMS autoresponder, remained at home to create a false alibi. The final, damning piece of evidence is a new lab report showing that Rachel’s blood was found lodged in the setting of Tiffany’s large diamond engagement ring. Colm reveals that the ring tore through the killer’s gloves during the attack. Confronted, Tiffany admits to experiencing years of suppressed rage over Martin’s serial infidelity, which culminated when he demanded that she cut her long hair and then began an affair with a young woman he praised for her own long hair. Tiffany is then arrested. In the aftermath, the case against Martin is dropped, but as he attempts to flee to a beach hotel, he’s ambushed by Boucher, indicating that he’s now a pawn in Beau’s criminal enterprise. 

A parallel investigation into Frank Hastings’s death takes a dark turn when Bones discovers that Frank was filing a disciplinary complaint against Colm, making Colm a suspect in his murder. Meanwhile, Colm, beginning to heal from his grief, mentors Belle, encouraging her to pursue law school. The story ends at The Junction, where JD quietly watches over Colm and Belle, planning the next step in her revenge, which involves Belle. Belle approaches JD’s table, and JD introduces herself as Jane.