Second Post, private commissions
We write a mystery about one person.
Then we mail it to them.
Second Post builds a private mystery for a single person and delivers it into their actual life over several weeks: by post, by telephone, once or twice by hand. Someone who loves them commissions it; they say yes to the shape of it without learning a single detail.
One commission, as it happened.
Names changed. Dates kept.
- Day 1
- A postcard of her own street. The photograph is from 1962. On the back, a date and nothing else.
- Day 6
- She searches the date. One website exists for it. It knows her first name.
- Day 11
- A telephone call. The voice knows which bakery she goes to on Saturdays, and that she takes the table by the window.
- Day 19
- An envelope taped under that table. Inside, numbers. The key is a novel already on her shelf.
- Day 31
- A bench, a stranger, a key. The key opens a box. In the box is this whole story, printed and bound, every clue, every path not taken. On the last page, the name of the person who sent it.
Three ways to commission.
- Digital
- Two weeks. Websites that exist for one person, telephone calls, a voice they will not forget.
- $199 to $299
- Standard
- Four to six weeks. Three to five objects in the post, a friend or two recruited as accomplices, and the printed book at the end.
- $799 to $1,500
- Full
- Eight weeks. Things placed in their city. An actor. A finale in a room full of people who love them.
- $3,000 to $10,000
Every commission is read, line by line, by a human editor before the first envelope is sealed. We take on a few at a time.
The book at the end is the part people keep. Every finished book also carries one page of a larger cipher. No single reader can solve it. All of them together might.