April 1, 2022
In this new work from Sunday Times best-selling novelist/screenwriter Hamdy, cofounder of the popular UK literary festival Capital Crime, police officer Harriet Kealty is struggling to recoup professionally from a bad call when she finds an inscription in a secondhand book leading her to David Asha, apparently a suicide after his wife's death. But would he really leave young son Elliot behind? And what does this case have to do with Harri's old flame Ben Elmys, a family friend to the Ashas and surrogate father to Elliot? With a 75,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from June 20, 2022
In the preface to this stellar thriller from British author Hamdy (the Pendulum trilogy), popular novelist David Asha reflects on the close bond he shared with his son, Elliot, grateful for their time together but lamenting the tragic events that drove them apart. In the main narrative, various pertinent letters and emails, court and police reports, and news clippings tell the story of disgraced police detective Harriet Kealty’s monumental impact on Elliot’s life. Though dismissed from the force over manslaughter allegations, Harriet conducts a personal investigation into the deaths of university physicist Elizabeth Asha and her husband, David, believing foul play may be involved. The couple’s orphaned 10-year-old son has been entrusted to a family friend, Ben Elmys, a man Harriet once held strong feelings for, but who spurned her love. Mistrustful of Ben and concerned about the boy’s safety, Harriet goes on a private crusade to uncover evidence of wrongdoing, with shocking consequences. Intelligently plotted and powerfully told, Hamdy’s deviously twisty tale of fate and coincidence, love and courage, and profoundly tough choices will shock, stir, and haunt readers long after the final page. Hamdy has upped his game with this one. Agent: Hannah Sheppard, DHH Literary Agency (U.K.).
July 15, 2022
Harriet "Harri" Kealty is having a hard time. The love of her life has left her high and dry. She's lost her job as a police officer after the man who attacked her partner dies under mysterious circumstances. To top it all off, she's obsessed with what appears to be a murder-suicide in which her former beau is the prime suspect. For about three-quarters of its length, this British thriller balances twists and turns with weighty matters of fate, regret, grief, and longing. It's a multimedia production, with narrative bites coming from court transcripts, transcribed video tapes, good old-fashioned letters, and a third-person omniscient narrator. It keeps the reader guessing, as a thriller is supposed to. And then it falls off a cliff, much as one of its characters does. It hints at a possible science-fiction element throughout; three of its main characters are high-level scientists, and the novel leaves a trail of breadcrumbs suggesting that their work might come into play. When it does, the results are kind of interesting, then quite imaginative, as long as you don't think about it too much. Then the author explains. And explains. And explains. Harri all but vanishes for multiple pages at a time. Come back, Harri! She does, eventually, but by then the reader is swimming in scientific theory and wrestling with the book's wordy take on the space-time continuum. It's admirable when an author is willing to take a leap, but this one happens so fast and switches the novel's tone (not to mention its genre) so completely that the reader might wonder what happened to that lean thriller they were just reading. The novel ultimately gets so mired in plot exposition that the ending seems further away the closer you get. Too much exposition stalls a promising thriller.
COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
September 15, 2022
Hamdy blends a police procedural with a relationship story in this engaging mix of grit and romance. The beginning is double-barreled. Harriet Kealey, a sacked and lovelorn British police officer, is reading a self-help book when she comes upon words scrawled in the margin: "Help. He's trying to kill me." Despite being off the force, Harriet is on the case. Investigation reveals that the self-help tome was once a library book, and the last person to check it out was a woman who recently died. Her husband died soon after, in what looks like suicide. Harriet's digging leads her to the minder of the dead couple's estate, a blue-eyed dreamboat responsible for many rapturous pages, with plenty of hard-boiled fare along the way, involving the appearance of Harriet's former lover, who could be a murderer. Curiously, Hamdy throws a spanner in the works here, speculating that the universe is a computer that can be reprogrammed and the novel's plot manipulated. Block Theory comes to crime fiction. Too twisty for some, perhaps, but just right for others.
COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.