Murder by Design Summary: Lee Goldberg’s Design-Based Sleuth
TL;DR: When Buildings Become Accomplices
A celebrity chef dies at his own award luncheon after one sip of gumbo. A public relations executive falls down an unfinished mall staircase and lands on exposed rebar. A retired crime novelist is stabbed during what looks like a botched burglary.
Each death has an explanation. None of them has the right one.
Murder by Design by Lee Goldberg follows Edison Bixby, a former LAPD homicide star whose career ended when a bullet to the face left him with a brain injury and no verbal filter. Now he consults for an insurance company, paired with Wally Nash, a struggling actor hired to keep him from insulting everyone in sight.
Their method is unusual. They read rooms the way other detectives read fingerprints. The book is set across Los Angeles — malls, law firms, tract homes, canyon estates — where the built environment quietly shapes what people do.
- What it is: A first-person crime thriller narrated by an out-of-work actor who becomes the assistant to a disgraced detective.
- The hook: Bixby solves murders by studying architecture, floor plans, and product design — the idea that a space can make a crime possible.
- The twist engine: Cases that look like accidents, suicides, or home invasions turn out to be staged.
- The duo: One man says everything he thinks. The other survives by pretending to be other people.
- Core themes: Corporate liability, staged reality, and professional jealousy.
Who Will Enjoy This Book
- Readers of comedic crime fiction and amateur-sleuth mysteries.
- Fans of detective duos where one partner is brilliant and difficult.
- Anyone drawn to Los Angeles noir with a satirical edge.
- Readers who like procedural detail mixed with show-business humor.
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Murder by Design Summary (Spoilers Ahead)
Spoiler warning: the following section describes the plot, the culprit, and the ending.
Four years before the main story, Detective Edison Bixby arrives at the Belmont Hotel in downtown Los Angeles to investigate the death of celebrity chef Grant Murdock. Murdock collapsed after eating poisoned gumbo at a luncheon held in his honor.
Bixby deduces that every spoon at Murdock’s table was coated in poison, then publicly humiliates the suspects. When he turns his back on Murdock’s ex-wife, Edith Gotsford, she pulls a gun from her handbag and shoots him in the face.
Bixby survives. The bullet damages his prefrontal cortex, leaving him with traumatic coprolalia — a condition that strips away impulse control and forces him to blurt out unfiltered observations. His police career ends.
Four years later, Bixby works as a private consultant for Triax Global Insurance. Senior vice president Melissa Priddle hires Wally Nash, a temp worker and background actor, to serve as Bixby’s assistant, driver, and sensitivity coach.
The job exists for one reason: to stop Bixby from provoking lawsuits.
Their first assignment is a two-million-dollar life insurance claim for Lawrence Keefer, a crime novelist found dead in his ransacked Granada Hills study. Detective Bridget McGregor, Bixby’s former partner, calls it a home invasion.
Bixby asks Wally to improvise the break-in as a right-handed burglar would perform it. Wally enters through the right French door and immediately flees when confronted, which proves a real intruder would never have stayed to fight.
Keefer was left-handed. The struggle patterns in the room don’t align, and a pencil mark on the wall sits at heart height. Keefer had built a suicide that looked like murder so his policy would pay out for his disabled granddaughter, Sara.
Bixby hides the family jewels in his own safe and approves the payout anyway.
The next case involves Caroline Crowley, a public relations crisis specialist who fell down an unfinished curved staircase at the Woodland Hills Mall and was impaled on rebar. Mall security chief Paul “Pretzel” Wetzel and McGregor both call it an accident.
Bixby reads it as manipulation. An anonymous gift brought Crowley to the salon, chocolate-scented magazines targeted her strict keto diet, a pop-up poster steered her toward a vacant storefront, and a woman in a red wig matching Crowley’s ex-girlfriend startled her at the exact moment her foot met a sabotaged step.
The trail leads to Southfield Properties, the mall’s owners, and a past hotel deck collapse in Honolulu. Bixby confronts disgraced architect Archibald Twain at his snail-shell-shaped home in Northern California and accuses him of designing the fall to punish the people who ruined his career.
Soon after, construction worker Mort Dinkins — the man who sabotaged the stair — is found beheaded in his house. McGregor slaps Bixby and threatens him with a 5150 psychiatric hold.
She then asks for his help anyway. Her mentor, retired detective Art Malcolm, has been arrested for stabbing attorney Alan Rook in a glass-walled conference room at Ramsford, Wilson & DeAndrea.
Bixby uses the room’s layout to show that Malcolm was framed, and that three firm partners stabbed Rook together to hide an embezzlement of client settlement funds. McGregor arrests all three.
Then Bixby’s neighbor Peter Welbeck, a Monarch Motors salesman, is crushed to death by his own SUV in his driveway. Bixby finds a stuffed puppy used as a lure and a fatal flaw in the vehicle’s brake button design.
He panics. Convinced his brain injury created a second personality, Bixby confesses to Wally that he committed the murders himself — that some part of him wanted to destroy Monarch Motors, the manufacturer of the car that killed his parents.
Wally takes him to an emergency room. Tests rule out a stroke and any brain abnormality.
The next morning, Wally confronts McGregor outside Bixby’s house and accuses Bixby of being the killer. McGregor draws her weapon and shoots Wally in the chest — then reveals that she is the murderer.
She killed Crowley, beheaded Dinkins, crushed Welbeck, and framed Bixby out of professional jealousy and resentment. She also drugged his drinks with Rohypnol while sharing his bed.
Wally sits up uninjured. He was wearing a special-effects squib rig, and Bixby had loaded McGregor’s gun with blanks. Hidden cameras stream her confession live to the LAPD, and arriving officers arrest her.
Bixby and Wally end the case at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, visiting Edith Gotsford. She had coached McGregor from her prison cell, teaching her the design-based techniques behind the framing plot.
Back at Bixby’s Bugatti, Wally complains that the live-stream angle cut off his dramatic death scene. Bixby reminds him that credible motivation is what makes an acting choice work.
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Who’s Who in the Investigation
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Edison Bixby | Former LAPD homicide detective turned insurance consultant, living with a brain injury that removed his verbal filter. |
| Wally Nash | Struggling actor and temp worker hired as Bixby’s assistant, driver, and sensitivity coach; narrator of the book. |
| Detective Bridget McGregor | LAPD homicide detective and Bixby’s former partner and lover. |
| Melissa Priddle | Senior vice president of investigations at Triax Global Insurance who hires Wally. |
| Edith Gotsford | Socialite and ex-wife of Grant Murdock who shot Bixby in the face. |
| Grant Murdock | Celebrity chef poisoned at a luncheon held in his honor. |
| Lake Blue | Murdock’s second wife, a former model and influencer. |
| Dr. Rosalind Okamoto | LAPD medical examiner who assesses bodies at crime scenes. |
| Lawrence Keefer | Crime novelist and screenwriter whose death is the subject of a life insurance claim. |
| Andy Keefer | Lawrence Keefer’s son, who burned his father’s suicide note. |
| Sara Keefer | Lawrence Keefer’s wheelchair-bound granddaughter. |
| Caroline Crowley | Public relations crisis specialist who dies at Woodland Hills Mall. |
| Paul “Pretzel” Wetzel | Chief of security at Woodland Hills Mall. |
| Mai Vu | Owner of the nail salon inside the mall. |
| Archibald Twain | Architect ruined by a hotel deck collapse who lives in a snail-shell-shaped house. |
| Mort Dinkins | Construction worker who sabotaged the mall stair step. |
| Art Malcolm | Retired LAPD detective and former mentor to Bixby and McGregor. |
| Alan Rook | Attorney stabbed to death in a glass-walled conference room. |
| Charles Ramsford, Marcus Wilson, Brooke Halsey | Law firm partners who embezzled client settlement funds. |
| Peter Welbeck | Bixby’s neighbor and Monarch Motors salesman killed in his driveway. |
Books Like Murder by Design
Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse by Lee Goldberg — The same author’s novel featuring an obsessive, hyper-observant detective paired with a long-suffering assistant in a comedic mystery.
My Gun Has Bullets by Lee Goldberg — A satirical crime story set inside the absurdities of the Hollywood entertainment industry.
The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz — A humorous private investigator mystery built on eccentric family sleuthing and unorthodox methods.
The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly — An Los Angeles police procedural with forensic detail and a Southern California noir atmosphere.
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly — A Los Angeles legal thriller centered on courtroom strategy and the business of defending the guilty.
Hounded by David Rosenfelt — A wisecracking amateur-investigator mystery where an unlikely lead uncovers a larger scheme.
Summary by Chapter (Spoilers)
The book runs 21 sections in total: a prologue, eighteen numbered chapters, an author’s note and acknowledgments, and an author biography. It is narrated entirely in first person by Wally Nash.
Prologue: Wally Nash introduces himself as a Los Angeles actor and writer who pays bills through a staffing agency. He divides existence into the natural world, the built world, and the imaginary world, and admits he has only landed background roles as corpses.
A temp assignment brings him to Edison Bixby, whom he describes as wealthy, handsome, brilliant, and manipulative.
Chapter 1: Four years earlier, Bixby arrives at the Belmont Hotel to investigate the poisoning of chef Grant Murdock. He criticizes the ballroom’s light switch placement, then identifies poison on every spoon at Murdock’s table. After he turns his back on Edith Gotsford, she shoots him in the face, ending his police career.
Chapter 2: Four years later, Melissa Priddle interviews Wally for a role as Bixby’s assistant and minder. She explains that the gunshot caused traumatic coprolalia, destroying Bixby’s verbal impulse control while leaving his analytical abilities intact. Bixby tests Wally with blunt observations, then accepts him and hands over the Keefer claim.
Chapter 3: Wally moves into the guesthouse on Bixby’s Topanga Canyon estate. Bixby explains his belief that human-centered design shapes every decision people make. At Keefer’s Granada Hills home they meet Detective McGregor, whose history with Bixby is clearly personal, and survey the staged struggle in the study.
Chapter 4: Bixby has Wally perform the burglary as a right-handed intruder would, which shows a real thief would have escaped instead of fighting. The actual entry point matches left-handed habits, and the damage in the room does not fit the bloodstain. Bixby concludes the scene was staged and that Keefer died by suicide.
Chapter 5: Bixby reconstructs the method: a pencil mark at heart height, an ice pick fixed in place with candle wax, and a fire set to melt the evidence.
Pill organizers and delivery boxes reveal Keefer’s early-stage Alzheimer’s, and a photo of his granddaughter Sara explains the motive. Bixby confronts Keefer’s son Andy, keeps the family jewels, and approves the payout.
Chapter 6: Melissa Priddle assigns the death of Caroline Crowley, who fell down an unfinished mall staircase onto exposed rebar. Security footage shows her looking up in shock at a sharp curve before she fell.
Bixby asks why she was at the mall on a Saturday morning at all, and learns she had received an anonymous luxury mani-pedi.
Chapter 7: Wally requests full mall surveillance footage while Bixby dresses to project police authority. At Woodland Hills Mall, Bixby explains how commercial architecture directs consumer attention and foot traffic.
Security chief Paul Wetzel absorbs a series of blunt remarks about his weight and agrees to help.
Chapter 8: Salon owner Mai Vu confirms Crowley’s appointment was an anonymous gift. Bixby maps the environment around her: chocolate magazines outside the salon, a keto poster in a vacant storefront, and a woman in a red wig who startled Crowley at the sabotaged step. He tells Wetzel the building’s design made the murder possible and requests footage of the construction crew.
Chapter 9: Wally poses as a detective named Frank Hellinger to gain entry to the Crowley home in Sherman Oaks. A screensaver showing Crowley’s ex-girlfriend in a red dress confirms the killer’s disguise. Bixby finds stationery from Bernheim, Sutton & Associates, and Melissa Priddle remains unconvinced by the murder theory.
Chapter 10: At the firm’s Miracle Mile offices, executive Gordon confronts Bixby about a past five-million-dollar settlement involving Monarch Motors. Bixby reveals that the firm once painted his father as a drunk driver after his parents died in a crash.
He links the firm’s client Southfield Properties to the Honolulu deck collapse and names architect Archibald Twain as his suspect.
Chapter 11: Wally edits a video timeline of the Crowley murder and Bixby screens it for McGregor in his home theater. She throws a champagne bottle and a plate at him, accusing him of letting his parents’ death cloud his judgment. She then embraces him, and the two spend the night together.
Chapter 12: Melissa Priddle arrives the next morning, furious that Bernheim Sutton has publicly credited Bixby with proving Crowley was murdered. McGregor emerges from the house in Bixby’s smoking jacket. Wally argues that solving the homicide serves both Triax and the LAPD, and Bixby announces he will confront Twain in person.
Chapter 13: Bixby and Wally fly north and confront Archibald Twain at his snail-shell-shaped residence. Twain defends his belief that design controls behavior but denies killing Crowley, and suggests someone else with design expertise is framing him. Bixby returns to Los Angeles expecting Twain to panic and make a mistake.
Chapter 14: The pair obtains employee records from the mall renovation and identifies Mort Dinkins as the man who sabotaged the step. At Dinkins’s house they find Detective Abel Calero and a furious McGregor, who reports that Dinkins was beheaded the previous evening. McGregor slaps Bixby and threatens a 5150 hold.
Chapter 15: McGregor calls Bixby to Men’s Central Jail to evaluate the arrest of retired detective Art Malcolm, accused of stabbing attorney Alan Rook. Bixby inspects the glass “library” conference room at Ramsford, Wilson & DeAndrea and proves the spatial evidence rules out a single attacker.
Three firm partners are arrested for the murder and the underlying embezzlement.
Chapter 16: Bixby’s neighbor Peter Welbeck is crushed by his own SUV in his driveway, with a stuffed puppy left as a lure. Bixby identifies design flaws in the vehicle’s shifter and brake buttons, then flees in panic and confesses to Wally that he committed all three murders. Wally takes him to an emergency room, where tests find no stroke or brain abnormality.
Chapter 17: Wally accuses Bixby of being the killer in front of McGregor, and she shoots him in the chest, revealing herself as the murderer. She admits to killing Crowley, Dinkins, and Welbeck out of jealousy and to framing Bixby.
Wally rises unharmed in a squib rig, Bixby reveals her gun held blanks and that toxicology found Rohypnol in his system, and hidden cameras stream her confession to the LAPD.
Chapter 18: Bixby and Wally visit Edith Gotsford at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, where she confirms she coached McGregor from prison on design-based framing. She takes satisfaction in the damage done to both Bixby and McGregor.
Wally complains that the live-stream framing cut off his death scene, and Bixby tells him credible motivation is what makes acting work.
Author’s Note & Acknowledgments: Goldberg describes the architectural and environmental psychology research behind the novel’s premise. He credits his brother Tod Goldberg, screenwriter Phoef Sutton, and the real-life Malibu property that inspired Bixby’s estate, along with his editor, agent, and publishing team.
About the Author: A short biography covering Goldberg’s novel series and his television writing and producing credits.
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Book Details at a Glance
- Genre & Subgenre: Crime thriller, mystery, humorous detective fiction, police procedural
- Core Narrative Tropes: Unlikely detective duo, staged crime scenes, unfiltered truth-teller, detective frame-up, vengeful ex-partner
- Tone & Atmosphere: Satirical, witty, fast-paced, theatrical, Southern California noir
- Primary Conflict: Bixby and Wally investigate deaths that look accidental or self-inflicted while a hidden killer uses environmental design to commit murders and frame Bixby
- Pacing Style: Fast-paced episodic procedural plotting with sharp dialogue and twist endings
- Book Structure: 21 sections — prologue, eighteen chapters, author’s note and acknowledgments, and an author biography; first-person narration by Wally Nash
- ISBN-10: 1662533594
- ISBN-13: 978-1662533594
- Pages: 239
- Series: Book 1 of 2 in the Edison Bixby series
- Author Background: Lee Goldberg is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than sixty novels, including the Eve Ronin, Ian Ludlow, Sharpe & Walker, and Fox & O’Hare series, and a television writer and producer on Monk and Diagnosis Murder.
