Any day when I know I’m going to see Samantha Farmer is a day I prepare for like I’m going into battle.

That’s not true. But how would you get ready to have coffee with a gorgeous six-foot-tall woman Hollywood star who’s known for speaking her mind, both on the red carpet and off?

You wouldn’t have coffee, first of all. I have coffee with my agent. My manager. Lin Manuel Miranda. Sam and I worked together almost every day for six years on the hit detective procedural Craven’s Daughter, and she treats my two sisters like her own, but I never once had coffee with her. I had the time of my life with her. I shared long and yearning glances with her, on camera and off. She was the first person I let in since my parents died. The space Sam made in my heart was capacious, confusing—and then empty.

The run of the show ended after six seasons, short of its series finale, mostly because Sam walked. She did it to send a message to the network about their unwillingness to name the relationship between Sam’s character and mine. She did it to make it clear she wouldn’t tolerate the hush the higher-ups forced on the set after our makeup artist and friend, Jen Arnot, died in a terrible on-set accident.

And she did it to get away from me.

That was five years ago. The fans have kept Craven’s Daughter alive with their demand for reruns, not to mention through fan fiction in which our characters, PI Cora Banks and former FBI agent Henri Shannon, finally admit how they feel. Ours was a ship that never sailed, but if there’s one thing true in Hollywood, it’s that the guys in suits are always willing to squeeze a stone for blood. Which is why I’ve been turning my closet inside out, looking for something good enough to wear to meet Sam Farmer on our old set. The network’s pulled Craven’s Daughter from the mothballs for a reunion special, tapping Sam and me to host a rewatch podcast.

That’s their agenda. Mine is to figure out if there’s a way to fix the friendship I broke when the show ended. Scary in and of itself—but there’s something else I’m worried about, which is that Sam never does anything without an agenda all her own.

Maybe trading in my usual dance tights and rehearsal sweats for fashion will be the armor I need to face her again on our old set. I’m hoping it can shield me against all the hurt that I know is still just under the surface. If Sam will even agree to do the rewatch podcast—a big ask—what will she have to say about the episodes our fans want us to talk about the most? What might I finally understand about her problems with our showrunner and writer? What was it about the aftermath of Jen’s death that shut her down?

I’m a woman who always likes to have a plan. I’ll admit it’s hard to make a plan that navigates secrets, old wounds, the beast of fame, and all the knives pointed at all the backs on a Hollywood soundstage, but there’s a lot I would do for Sam Farmer.

Like solve a murder.

I just have to hope that when we put on our headsets and start recording eleven years’ worth of Hollywood gossip, inside information, and secrets, I can convince her that there’s no battle I won’t follow her into.

Big Name Fan: A TV Detectives Mystery, Book 1
Genre: Romance Mystery
Release: February 2025
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Purchase Link

A perfect story for every Rizzoli and Isles fan who rooted for the leads to get together, this new novel is also ideal for fans of Only Murders in the Building and books like Spoiler Alert, with a co-stars to lovers pair reunited after years apart and a murder to investigate behind the scenes in Hollywood.

Bexley Simon and Sam Farmer aren’t detectives, but they play them on TV. Well, played, past tense. The iconic cult hit that was Craven’s Daughter ended five years ago, and their friendship died along with it. Fans were disappointed that the pair’s legendary chemistry went unfulfilled—and other fans were crushed that the actual spark between actresses Bex and Sam didn’t pay off, either. The network never intended for two women to get romantic, in life or onscreen, despite the fans. But the bigger tragedy was the loss of their dear friend, makeup artist Jen Arnot, whose accidental death cast a pall over the series’ last episodes.

Now the network has decided on a reunion special, and Bex and Sam are thrust together once more as hosts of a rewatch podcast that will feature favorite episodes. Their first guest—a megawatt star who played a murder victim early on—drops a bombshell. Among the millions of pixels of fanfic written about the show online, one truly prolific author, known in the fiction world as the show’s Big Name Fan, was an insider, almost certainly someone from the cast or crew.

As the podcast moves along—and the spark between Bex and Sam threatens to burn down the studio—the pair realize they’re faced with two actual mysteries: Who is their Big Name Fan? And was Jen’s death an accident, or did someone want her dead? Sifting through clues as they question cast and crew, the duo will need to separate fact from fiction as they make their personal partnership into an unmistakable canon . . .

Meet the authors
Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare are the critically acclaimed, best-selling authors of more than a dozen novels. In addition to mystery, they co-write queer romance as Mae Marvel, and they’ve been known to dabble in young adult and sapphic suspense. They’re married and live in Green Bay, Wisconsin, with two teenagers, two dogs, multiple fish, two glorious cats, four hermit crabs, and a bazillion plants in a very old house with a garden.