Josh Berman spent years creating mysteries for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and now the Emmy-nominated writer and producer is taking his forensic expertise somewhere decidedly stranger.
Berman is making his debut as a novelist with Dead Matters, a paranormal crime thriller arriving in January 2027. And the project will reunite him with one of the stars he spent years writing for on CSI: Marg Helgenberger.
Helgenberger, who played Catherine Willows on the long-running CBS procedural, will narrate the audiobook version of Dead Matters. According to Berman, it will mark the first time the actress has narrated a novel.
“I had imagined Marg while writing Ella,” Berman said of the book’s protagonist, FBI Special Agent Ella Penrose. “Ella is extremely smart and scientifically rigorous, but she’s also compassionate, funny, and vulnerable. Marg represents all those qualities at the same time.”
Berman added that having Helgenberger bring the character to life feels “wonderfully full-circle” after their years together on CSI.
Berman wrote and produced the first six seasons of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and later worked on Bones and The Blacklist. He also created the Lifetime series Drop Dead Diva.
That procedural background plays heavily into Dead Matters, which follows Penrose, the head of the FBI’s Paranormal Crimes Unit, as she investigates cases that appear to defy scientific explanation.
The mystery begins at 3:02 a.m. in Savannah, Ga., when a bank security camera captures what appears to be a zombie-like figure moving through the city’s historic district. Hours later, Penrose is called to a nearby home where a man has been found dead and partially devoured.
Things only get weirder from there.
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Evidence includes beetles from a species believed to be extinct, a decaying human arm that belongs to an entirely different body and a piece of fabric connected to the Civil War. Meanwhile, leaked security footage is spreading online, making it increasingly difficult to separate evidence from viral speculation.
For Berman, that clash between science, belief and what people think they’re seeing is central to the story.
“That’s really the reason I wrote the book,” he explained. “I’m fascinated by the moment we’re living through, where science and belief sometimes seem to be pulling people in opposite directions.”
Despite the supernatural possibilities, Berman said Penrose approaches the bizarre cases the same way an investigator on CSI might: follow the evidence.
“The stranger the case becomes, the harder Ella clings to evidence, because evidence is the one thing she trusts,” he said.
Berman also found himself adjusting to the freedom of writing a novel after decades in television. At one point while writing an elaborate sequence, he caught himself worrying about how much it would cost to produce before remembering there wasn’t actually a production budget.
“It doesn’t cost anything more to crash a helicopter than it does to have two people talking in a room,” he joked.
And Dead Matters apparently won’t be Penrose’s only case. Berman revealed that he is already working on a second book, Dead Matters 2: Murder of Crows, which will feature a new mystery while continuing the characters’ ongoing stories.
Dead Matters is scheduled for publication in January 2027.
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