The Guncle meets Every Time I Go On Vacation Someone Dies in this fun, twisty mystery following a spoiled nepo baby forced to work at a struggling summer camp who stumbles into a real-life murder mystery he has no choice but to solve.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from A Murder Most Camp by Nicolas DiDomizio, which releases on April 28th 2026.
Rustic cabins. Lakefront bonfires. A painfully hot lifeguard. And a murder? Summer has never been this camp.
Mikey Hartford IV has coasted through his twenties in a distracted blur of yachts and sex and partying. But when his father discovers his latest million-dollar impulse buy and changes the terms of his trust, the party’s finally over. Now, unless Mikey can make a positive contribution to the world before his thirtieth birthday—one that doesn’t involve throwing cash at his problems—he’ll never see another yacht again. (Or even so much as a canoe.)
Enter: Camp Lore, a struggling summer camp in upstate New York where Mikey has to work as the oldest, least-qualified staffer to prove that he can “do good” alongside his twelve-year-old aunt. (Yes, aunt.) But Mikey isn’t sure he’ll be able to survive the camp’s ramshackle living conditions, let alone the gaggle of preteens who won’t leave his side. And when his campers become obsessed with a local legend set at an abandoned cabin on the grounds, Mikey’s chances of not making it through the summer become dangerously real—because it turns out there’s a murder hidden beneath Camp Lore. And someone there will stop at nothing to keep it that way.
Solving a decade-old cold case will surely be enough “good” for Mikey to earn his inheritance. He just has to stay alive long enough to do it…
EXCERPT
One
It’s been four days since Mikey Hartford’s left cheek accidentally caught an errant spritz of SPF 90—otherwise known as Why-Bother-Going-Out-on-the-Yacht-at-All?-spray—and his tan still hasn’t evened out. So he leans against the door of his gunmetal gray Porsche, closes his eyes, and angles the bad half of his face toward the sun.
“Come on, come on, come on,” he whispers. As if the sun is listening. As if the sun can not only fix his tan but also stop time and save him from having to walk west on Seventy-Seventh Street toward the agonizing time capsule that is his childhood home. “Help me.”
The warmth on his skin conjures a blur of memories from last week’s island-hopping excursion—cascading waters, bottomless Dom Pérignon, his trusty Louis Vuitton roller trunk stuffed with slutty designer swim briefs—and his facial muscles relax for a moment…only to tense back up as a yellow cab nearly sideswipes his Porsche while trying to avoid collision with a crying teenager on an e-bike. He’s definitely not in Mykonos anymore.
His phone buzzes with a text from Dad:
I’m waiting.
Mikey pushes the dread out of his system and starts moving. Just because he was forced to cut his trip short for an “emergency father-son meeting,” it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s in trouble. Right? He’s a grown man, for Christ’s sake. Even if his father refuses to treat him like one.
He takes a deep breath as the familiar facade of Manhattan’s historic Hartford mansion comes into view: stone arches, trimmed hedges, twin gargoyles that have always struck him as somehow demonic. Raymond waves from behind the front gate. He’s gotten a makeover in the months since Mikey last visited—shaved his head and grown a robust white beard—but his style hasn’t changed at all. Pressed khakis, black polo, and a classic gold Rolex that young Mikey helped pick out while Christmas shopping with his mother sometime in the early aughts.
“There he is,” Raymond chirps. “Movie Mikey!”
The use of his childhood nickname would normally be enough to catapult him into a depressive three-day bender, but Raymond’s the one person in the house who can get away with it. “Are you aware that I’m twenty-nine years old?”
“Are you aware that you’re ninety seconds late? Your father is most displeased.”
Mikey ignores the warning and settles into the comfortable dynamic of loving bitchiness that’s always existed between the two of them. The special bond between hired help and only child. “Ninety whole seconds?! Must be the hard drugs and homosexual lifestyle.”
“Or your long-standing pattern of avoidance when it comes to all things Michael Hartford III. Who’s to say?” Raymond ushers Mikey into the mansion’s aggressively air-conditioned foyer. “You’re looking good, kid. Did you get taller?”
Mikey sighs. He wishes he could stay downstairs and hang out with Raymond all afternoon. Chug dirty martinis and fill him in on the past several months of parties and hookups and gossip until they’re finally drunk and earnest enough to reminisce on their favorite memories from when Mikey’s mother was alive. Maybe even watch some of the old “movies” ten-year-old Mikey wrote and directed, in which she and Raymond always enthusiastically starred.
“Taller?” Mikey’s voice echoes off the cathedral ceilings as they move deeper into the mansion—a museum-like fusion of marble and brass and velvet. “Again…are you aware that I’m twenty-nine years old?”
“Tanner, I meant.” Raymond holds back a laugh. “On the right side of your face, at least.”
Mikey grimaces. “Did Grandpa fire the housekeeping staff and add mopping and shoveling to your list of managerial duties?”
“Why? Because I—”
“Look like Mr. Clean and the old guy from Home Alone whisked their sperm together and turkey baster-ed it into Khloé Kardashian’s surrogate, yes.”
“What’s terrifying is that I’m pretty sure you actually think that’s how surrogacy works.” Raymond gives Mikey an avuncular pat on the back as they arrive at the hallway elevators. “Your father is waiting for you up in the Frog Room. I highly recommend you haul ass.”
The elevator doors slide open to a majestic library full of custom woodwork, ornately framed fine art (including an actual Monet), and rare first editions. Because god forbid anyone in this family allow a single square inch of their living space to not be casually displaying a million-something dollars’ worth of old crap.
“Michael Stewart Hartford IV…” Dad sits upright behind an oak desk carved into the shape of a giant bullfrog. He’s wearing a suit that could feed a small country and a facial expression that could vaporize one. “You’re late.”
Mikey takes a seat across from him and shrinks into the leather armchair, already feeling like the moody child he was back when Dad’s slicked-back Kennedy hair was dark brown instead of light gray. “Must you call me by my full name?”
“Must you be so resentful of your full name?”
“Respectfully,” Mikey says, “it sounds like the name equivalent of an antique grandfather clock that might’ve been cute two hundred years ago but now reeks of dead people and misogyny. The Roman numeral? I mean, come on.”
Dad’s face barely moves. “That’s disrespectful.”
“I said ‘respectfully’!”
His father gestures at an oil painting on the wall behind him—a portrait of Michael Hartford I. He’s in a tweed suit, standing at the doors of the very first HartMart, randomly holding a red-eyed tree frog in the palm of his hand. Mikey always loved the picture as a kid, mainly because the frog reminded him of the tree house level in Donkey Kong. Now it just reminds him of his father’s disappointment. “Your great-grandfather came from very humble beginnings…”
Mikey suppresses an eye roll. “I’m well aware—”
“But he worked hard and sacrificed in order to give his family a better life,” Dad continues. “He opened a local market that your grandfather later grew into a thriving regional grocery chain, which I then grew into the nation’s second-largest superstore brand. If it weren’t for the three Michael Stewart Hartfords who came before you, you would have nothing.” He taps his desk. “You certainly wouldn’t be gallivanting around the globe on your little yacht trips.”
Mikey shrugs. “Someone’s gotta live the ‘better life’ that Great-Granddaddy Hartford dreamed of.”
Dad shakes his head in the same tired way he always does when Mikey fails to properly revere the HartMart origin story. “Do you have any idea how entitled you sound?”
Mikey does, actually, and he’s not proud of it. He’s been surrounded by spoiled brats his entire life—from boarding school to summer camp to just last week in the Aegean Sea—and he typically judges them just as harshly as his father does. But per usual, being in the same room as Michael Hartford III has the power to turn him into the very thing he despises.
Because what’s the alternative? Admit he’s been carrying around a core of guilt ever since he was old enough to realize how unfair it is for him to have so much when others have so little? Admit that a part of him does value his father’s opinion? Admit he wants to make him proud but worries that ship sailed several fuckups and one life-altering death ago? Risk a moment of Disney Channel sincerity between father and son? Mikey can’t let that happen. Not as long as the notoriously WASPy Hartford blood flows through his veins.
“It was a joke,” Mikey attempts.
“We don’t have time for jokes.” Dad straightens his posture and narrows his eyes at his only son. “I called you here for a very important reason.”
The office falls silent as Dad’s death stare intensifies just enough for Mikey to realize that he’s not messing around. Mikey shifts his weight and says, “Which is…?”
Dad clears his throat. “I’ve added some new restrictions to the terms of your trust.”
Mikey’s chair nearly tips over at the word restrictions. Was there an earthquake on the Upper West Side? Or is that just the sensation of learning his entire future has been jeopardized without his consent?
“Restrictions?” Mikey chokes out. “But…”
The terms of Mikey’s trust have been immutably defined since he was eleven years old, and the nineteen years since have all been pure buildup to his thirtieth birthday—now only four months away—at which point he will finally gain unfettered access to his inheritance. No more trustees and permission slips and family accountants keeping tabs on his purchases through the Hartford AmEx account—just total freedom.
Mikey sits up and catches his breath. “You can’t do that!”
Dad makes a yes-I-can face and slides him a stack of papers. The cover sheet is a bullet-pointed deal memo with phrases like “core conditions” and “locked assets.”
“Your inheritance is now predicated on a new core condition, which you must satisfy before your thirtieth birthday,” Dad informs him. “Otherwise the current terms will remain indefinitely—no inheritance until I’m gone.”
“You can’t do that!” Mikey repeats. “Mom specifically said that—”
“Your mother ‘specifically’ said a lot of things.” Dad’s voice catches for a microsecond at the mention of his late wife, but he quickly composes himself before shuffling a few folders around on his desk and presenting Mikey with more paperwork. “Does this look familiar?”
It’s a set of closing documents for the Williamsburg townhouse Mikey bought last month, which his best friend Jamie is currently living in. So that’s why Dad is pissed? Because Mikey bought a piece of property in Brooklyn? All the other Hartfords practically buy property in their sleep. “Jamie got kicked out of his apartment. He needed a place to stay—”
“So you bought him a brownstone?”
“It’s a smart real estate investment!”
“You’re collecting rent from him?”
“Of course I’m not,” Mikey says. “That would be gauche.”
Dad inhales and hisses out a stream of air like a leaky—and highly dissatisfied—balloon. Mikey fixes his gaze on the portrait of his frog-holding great-grandfather and searches for a defense that his father might accept.
He’s got nothing. He knew at the time of closing that he might eventually have to explain himself, but he pushed those worries aside in favor of the high he got from the look on Jamie’s face. Something between triumph and satisfaction, but if Mikey squinted hard enough, it could almost pass for love.
“I’ve let your exorbitant spending habits slide for far too long,” Dad says. “And this time, you forged my signature to get the funds released. That’s an actual crime. Do you understand that?”
“It was five million dollars! That’s, like, basically free.”
Mikey is fully aware of how flippant he sounds about a sum that most people would consider life-changing, but again he can’t help but revert into a petulant teenager in his father’s presence. It’s like the person he is in his mind and the person in control of his mouth are entirely different entities around this man and his frog desk.
“You paid a quarter million more than what the property was assessed for…” Dad pins Mikey with a pitying glare. “Are you trying to buy Jamie’s love? Is that it? Because that’s not how friendship works.”
The accusation hits Mikey in the gut. His face flushes, and his voice ticks up an octave as he says, “Buy his love? Is that what you think of me? You think I’m that pathetic?” Even though, well, he’s not not that pathetic. “I shouldn’t need permission to buy a townhouse. I’m thirty years old—”
“Not quite—”
“And I know how friendship works.”
Mikey would like to believe that Jamie would still be friends with him even if Mikey never paid for anything, but Mikey is also keenly aware that Jamie—who went to Yale on loans he’s still paying off—views the Hartford family as everything that’s wrong with the distribution of wealth in America. He literally wore an “eat the rich” tank top on the yacht trip last week. While surrounded by rich people. The brownstone was simply Mikey’s way of saying, “Please don’t eat me.”
Dad taps a pen against his desk. “This isn’t only about the townhouse. This is about your lack of direction. Motivation. Purpose. It’s about the fact that you haven’t worked a day in your life since you graduated from Yale.”
Mikey has heard this line from his father a thousand times before—and normally he’s capable of letting it go—but now it really pisses him off. “Are you kidding me? I busted my ass after college—”
“When you moved out to California?” Dad says. “Please. All it took was a single brush with failure to make you give up on…whatever it was you were chasing out there.”
Mikey breathes through the sting of his father’s dismissiveness. This could be an opportunity to educate him on exactly what he was “chasing” out there, but what’s the point? His father has never given a shit about anything other than the HartMart empire and he isn’t going to start anytime soon. He’s already made up his mind about who Mikey is.
“Why should I bother working?” Mikey says. “Any level of success I achieve in any field would only take it away from someone more deserving! Someone who’s not a nepo baby. I’m actually doing the world a favor by not working.”
“I didn’t call you here to have this argument again.” The exasperation in Dad’s voice gets tighter with each new word. “I called you here to tell you that I cannot in good conscience grant you full access to your inheritance until you meet the new core condition of your trust.”
Mikey straightens his posture and suppresses the urge to further defend himself. He’s nothing but a child in this office. Negotiating with his father won’t work: The new terms have already been papered. His only choice is to brace for impact and assess the damage.
He scans the deal memo and reads the core condition out loud. “Do good? What does that even mean?”
“It means you must spend the remaining months until your thirtieth birthday in service of something greater than yourself,” Dad explains. “No parties, no yacht, no leisure of any kind. Raymond will wire you a limited monthly allowance—”
“Buying the townhouse was in service of something greater than myself. I literally provided housing to the homeless!”
“Son…”
“I donate to Mom’s lymphoma research fund every year,” Mikey tries instead. “Not to mention—”
“I’m well aware of all the charitable organizations you support. But this isn’t about throwing money at the world’s problems. It’s about making a personal sacrifice to actually help people.”
Mikey slumps back in the oversized armchair, defeated and confused and feeling even more scolded than he did back when he sat in this office as a shitheel of a twelve-year-old after getting in trouble for scribbling ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE ME all over his standardized testing answer sheets. Apparently “god” is Michael Hartford III.
“A personal sacrifice for the greater good,” Mikey says. “How am I supposed to do that?”
Dad’s face morphs into a darkly satisfied smile. “That’s where Sierra comes in.”
A wire in Mikey’s brain short-circuits at this response. Of all the names his father could have dropped in this conversation, Sierra is the last one he’d have expected. “You mean Anna Nicole Smith? What the hell does she know about personal sacrifice?”
“You need to stop calling her that,” Dad says with a pointed look. “She’s a good person.”
“So was Anna Nicole Smith,” Mikey counters. “Did you not see the documentary? I view her as an icon and a queen.” A pause. “But if you don’t think it’s weird that Sierra married my grandfather after I literally went to high school with her—”
“She was a senior when you were a freshman.”
“Ah, yes, just like Grandpa.”
Crickets.
“Sierra has more than proven herself as a competent wife and mother over the past twelve years,” Dad says, staunch in his refusal to validate Mikey’s snark with a reaction. “And she also knows a thing or two about helping the community. She’ll be waiting for you at the Panera on Broadway at five o’clock sharp. You two can have an early dinner and discuss your new summer plans.”
“You expect me to physically consume food at a literal Panera?” Mikey nearly bursts into a laugh, but his father’s expression is serious.
“Panera is one of the only dining establishments around here that can accommodate your new fixed income.” Dad rises from the bullfrog desk and extends an open palm. “By the way, I’m going to need the keys to your Porsche.”
