In this spectacularly devious novel by New York Times bestselling author Peter Swanson—featuring the smart and complex Lily Kintner from his acclaimed novel, The Kind Worth Killing—a private eye starts to follow a possibly adulterous husband, but little does he know that the twisted trail will lead back to the woman who hired him.

There was always something slightly dangerous about Joan. So, when she turns up at private investigator Henry Kimball’s office asking him to investigate her husband, he can’t help feeling ill at ease. Just the sight of her stirs up a chilling memory: he knew Joan in his previous life as a high school English teacher, when he was at the center of a tragedy.

Now Joan needs his help in proving that her husband is cheating. But what should be a simple case of infidelity becomes much more complicated when Kimball finds two bodies in an uninhabited suburban home with a “for sale” sign out front. Suddenly it feels like the past is repeating itself, and Henry must go back to one of the worst days of his life to uncover the truth.

Is it possible that Joan knows something about that day, something she’s hidden all these years? Could there still be a killer out there, someone who believes they have gotten away with murder? Henry is determined to find out, but as he steps closer to the truth, a murderer is getting closer to him, and in this hair-raising game of cat and mouse only one of them will survive.

Published
March 7, 2023
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Author

Peter Swanson

It’s not every day a crime writer dares to peel back the tidy edges of the mystery genre, but Peter Swanson has made a career of doing just that—inviting readers into stories where the comfort of predictability is always just one twist away from unraveling. Known for psychological thrillers that relish in the sinister potential of the everyday, Swanson doesn't just craft plots—he toys with expectation, layering deceit, obsession, and dread into tales that feel disarmingly plausible. Before he was unsettling readers with novels like The Kind Worth Killing and Eight Perfect Murders, Swanson was a Massachusetts native who found his footing in…