Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Cate Holahan’s The Kidnapping of Alice Ingold, which releases on November 1st 2025.

Alice Ingold has been kidnapped. Call the police. Alert the media. You can’t play this game without all the pieces.

Beautiful, blond, and immensely privileged, Alice Ingold is the perfect victim for a true-crime obsessed culture—and for a masked duo with a singular purpose. Instead of a demand for ransom, her captors have a riddle, and they’re inviting the entire country to solve it.

No one is more invested in the search than Alice’s parents: Catherine, a socialite with obscene generational wealth, and Brian, a visionary AI tech guru. But while Brian turns to machines to solve the problem, Catherine tries to crowdsource the solution, stopping at nothing to bring her daughter home. And America isn’t just watching the story unfold…it’s playing along. The nationwide scavenger hunt for Alice is on.

As an increasingly desperate Catherine strives to understand each new clue, a complex picture of the crime develops. Soon, everyone will see the kidnapping of Alice Ingold for what it is—and Alice won’t be the only one who will need saving.

Alice Ingold

Diary Entry One

My first kidnapper smelled expensive. I’m guessing this detail isn’t too helpful, given that detectives only travel with scent hounds in prison-break movies and my olfactory senses aren’t sufficiently honed to identify the exact perfume. But I’ve walked through enough fancy department stores to recognize the complex mix of florals and fruit oils that define high-end spritzes. And it’s the best I’ve got. I’m still unsure of my assailant’s gender. Since taking me, heeled boots have blurred her (his?) height. Bulky sweatshirts have hidden her body. She hasn’t shared anything personal, let alone how she identifies. I haven’t seen her face. I’ve yet to hear her real voice.

Writing demands pronouns, however, so I’m sticking with female ones. She gave me this diary, along with a couple of flimsy pens and the instruction to tell “our story” shortly after locking me in the windowless cage I now find myself in.

I haven’t decided whether writing makes her more or less likely to kill me. I’m staking my life on less. And I need to live. There’s so much I want to do, so much I haven’t had a chance to fail at yet, let alone accomplish.

When she arrived, I was hand-washing plates. The chore was by choice rather than necessity. My mother, I’m sure, is telling police that my apartment is one step up from a meth den. Mattress on the floor inches from an open-air toilet? Truth is, I was kidnapped from a spacious yet-to-be-legalized warehouse conversion, the kind of apartment that’s all over Instagram thanks to original casement windows and an open-plan layout. The kitchen, admittedly, appears a rush job, possibly done under cover of night when no one would notice cabinet installers in front of a property zoned for commercial activities. But it’s equipped with all the necessary appliances: stovetop, sink, microwave. Dishwasher.

Still, my grandma’s heirloom china couldn’t be trusted to a Kenmore. So after having my mother over for lunch, I placed Nana’s plates in the sink, turned on the hot water, and began rinsing.

Trendy or not, the building’s plumbing is temperamental. The temperature instantly shifted from lukewarm to scalding, burning my hand. I switched the faucet to the coldest setting and ran the stream over the red bloom between my thumb and index finger, cursing myself for letting frustration make me careless.

In the short time I’ve been in this cell, I’ve wondered how things may have unfolded differently had I not been washing the dishes. Had the attempt at proving my self-sufficiency over lunch gone surprisingly well and my mom had offered to, say, take me out to buy dish towels. Or had my dad decided to join her, for once. He’d have been there when my assailant arrived. Would that have changed everything?

The water’s rush covered any initial knock. I didn’t realize someone was outside until a Morse code message blared in my apartment. Buzz. Buzz. Buzzzzz.

I hurried toward the door, absentmindedly bringing a dish. Such frantic bell ringing could only be my mom, I thought, and her return—so soon after departing my place in a huff—indicated an emergency. Smash-and-grab was the likely culprit. Someone had probably broken her car’s passenger-side window to check for portable electronics. She’d returned to wait for the cops and complain, again, that my neighborhood is a crime-ridden cesspool.

“Mom?” I opened the door. “Everything alright?”

“That depends.”

A stranger shoved me from the threshold. As I stumbled back, the wet plate slipped from my hand, exploding on the ground like the last scene of an ASMR compressor video, the ones intended to release anxiety via images of destruction. The scene was just as consuming for me, though not at all calming or satisfying. I forgot to dodge the shrapnel—forgot, even, about the invader in my home. I thought only that I’d never be able to replace my grandmother’s dish. Even if I found another at an auction, it wouldn’t be the one held by the woman who’d hosted me each summer in her Newport home, bragging to anyone who’d listen about her granddaughter, the writer.

I heard the door shut. “Don’t you want to know what it depends on?”

The voice was odd. More robotic than human. Every word was followed by a tinny reverb, as if auto-tuned flat. I whirled toward its source, expecting to see some sort of microphone or tracheal tube.

A stranger’s sweatshirt billowed over bootcut jeans. I looked toward the face framed by the cinched hood.

There was no face.

In place of a nose, mouth, and eyes was a black expanse. Not a mask. Balaclavas give the impression of human features: the bump of a nasal bridge, cutouts around the orbital sockets. Rubber masks have plastic prosthetics. This was a void, scarier than any Halloween monster. I stared into an abyss.

“It depends on whether you cooperate,” she continued.

As I tried to process what was happening, she waved a gloved hand in front of the space beneath her fleece hood. Two red circles materialized, along with a glowing grin. I was being robbed by an LED jack-o’-lantern.

“Get out of my apartment!”

My order, delivered while backing away from her, was far less emphatic than needed. In retrospect, I should have yelled it while ramming into her chest. At a minimum, I should have taken my own advice and run past her into the hallway, shouting for my neighbors. Some mix of fear and self-preservation stopped me from going on the offensive, though. While I guessed my uninvited guest was female, she was still bigger than I was. And judging from her digitized expression, meaner.

“That’s the plan.” She waved in front of the screen again. The animation changed to a Pac-Man-style ghost with googly eyes and a wavy line for a mouth. “But you’re going to come with me.”

Her cartoon lips trembled as she spoke, a visualization of a sound wave. Logically, my attacker’s new face made her no less threatening. Yet the sight of an uncertain mouth emboldened me. “I’m not going anywhere. You think because you went to Party City that I’m intimidated?”

I didn’t wait for an answer. My phone sat on the kitchen counter. I strode toward it, arm outstretched.

“Don’t.” A click added the full stop to her command. I froze, a battery-operated toy whose power switch had been flicked off. In the corner of my eye, I caught a glimmer of metal between gloved hands. She was aiming at my torso. “Open the window.”

My stubborn streak immediately turned yellow. I did as directed, moving toward the wall of casement windows and cracking open one of the panes, all the while assessing my likelihood of walking away from the two-story drop to the street. It seemed survivable, but barely. I’d have to jump exactly right.

“What do you want?” I asked.

Ghost Face answered by raising the gun until it pointed between my breasts. “We’re taking the fire escape down.”

Her tacit promise not to kill me won my compliance. I approached the open pane and pulled it up farther, revealing a metal staircase.

She gestured to the first step with her head, keeping the gun focused on my vital organs. “I’ll be right behind you.”

I stepped over the windowsill onto the grate. The metal staircase shuddered with my new weight, an ice sheet in the sun. I grabbed the railing and peered over the edge. If I intended to jump, it was now or never.

A Toyota idled in the alley below. Anyone passing would have figured that a rideshare driver was waiting for a passenger. The only difference I could see between the car and an Uber was a drug-dealer tint on the front window. Seeing through it was impossible.

Metal pressed through my sweatshirt into my spine. “Let’s go.”

Never go to a second location. The warning resounded in my head. Wherever Ghost Face and her waiting partner intended to take me would give them the advantage.

I gripped the banister more tightly. “I—I can’t move,” I stuttered to sell the lie. “I’m afraid of heights.”

My attacker pushed the barrel farther into my back. “Better get to lower ground, then.”

I refused to budge. “Why are you doing this to me?”

The question was a stalling tactic, as the answer was obvious: money. Someone had spotted “that shipping socialite” or “the AI guy’s wife” and realized that Catherine Newhouse Ingold was visiting her daughter.

“Get moving, bitch,” Ghost Face replied.

The voice changer turned her epithet jocular. I looked over my shoulder, half expecting to see the mask removed and one of my (soon-to-be former) friends laughing about “getting me good.”

The digital face was different from before. In place of the ghost’s wide eyes and uncertain mouth were two neon x’s and a sewn-shut smile. “Only two ways out of this.” The voice lowered to a mechanical groan. “Down the stairs or over the side.”

I maintained my position. “I can pay. My phone’s inside. If you’d let me call my mom—”

A laugh erupted from the voice changer, far more frightening than the foulmouthed Siri I’d been speaking with. “Poor little rich girl. Money can’t solve this problem.”

I descended one step, creating distance between me and her gun. “Then what can?”

Again, I felt the cold metal between my shoulder blades. “You’ll see,” she said. “They all will.”

© 2025 by Catherine Holahan

The post Read An Excerpt From ‘The Kidnapping of Alice Ingold’ by Cate Holahan appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Hello! Can you tell our readers about yourselves in one sentence?

Kimberly: I’m an Edgar Award nominated, USA Today bestselling author of thrillers and suspense novels with over one million copies sold worldwide.

Layne: I’m the Chicago-based bestselling author of The Favorites and other deliciously dramatic, unapologetically feminist books.

Cate: I started off writing about dead people, obituaries, in high school for the local paper and in some ways never stopped, which is why I now am a USA Today bestselling thriller author and screenwriter.

Vanessa: I’m a Cherokee author from rural Oklahoma, now living in the smallest state, writing bestselling thrillers while being closely managed by a pugapoo named Violet.  

Desperate Deadly Widows is the sequel to Young Rich Widows and it’s out now! If you could only describe it in three words, what would they be?

Kimberly: Funny, twisty & action-packed

Layne: Juicy, Glamorous, Empowering

Cate: Twisty, Fun, and Sexy

Vanessa: Campy, propulsive and yacht-y

What can readers expect?

Kimberly: The widows’ friendship is tested this go-around after the mayor’s death has the women scrambling to prove their innocence. Along the way, they’ll meet some charming new characters, but not everyone has their best intentions at heart. Someone is trying to take them down, and the widows will have to band together in order to survive.

Layne: Desperate Deadly Widows takes everything you loved about the first book and turns up the volume, so you can expect bigger, better adventures with our quartet of zany 80s ladies!

Cate: This novel has a lot of fun with the fabulously wealthy behaving badly, think Dynasty, while also looking into some of the real world consequences of the abuse of wealth and connections, particularly as it relates to minorities.

Vanessa: I love the opening hook (Mayor of Providence drops dead in the back of a strip club from poisoned champagne) because while it’s fiction, it’s not not something that could have happened in the 80s in Providence!

Where did the inspiration for Desperate Deadly Widows come from?

Layne: We know these characters so well now, a lot of the plot came from thinking about what would stress them out / force them to grow the most. Also, the whole point of this series is to have fun – and for people to have fun reading the book, first we had to have fun writing it!

Cate: We have really loved some of the books and movies pointing out the dangers of extreme wealth inequality and the rich and famous behaving badly. We were all Succession fans and White Lotus fans. So we wanted to bring that into this book in a very personal and Providence way.

Vanessa: I’ll add that there’s a plot around land rights and the Narragansett Indigenous community in Rhode Island that I really appreciated being about to share. We went to the Tomaquag Museum, which shares the culture and history of the tribes of Southern New England, and interviewed the Executive Director, Loren Spears. We developed a lawyer character to tackle these questions (and maybe as a love interest!), and we also incorporated a real issue in Providence when our downtown mall was built on a Narragansett burial ground. I find real life issues to be the biggest inspiration.

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

Kimberly: I loved getting to give my character Camille a love interest in Aiden. He’s exactly the kind of man she wouldn’t choose to fall far–smart but not slick, successful but not rolling in cash–and at first he seems immune to her charms. Their push-pull as the story evolves was a real joy to write.

Layne: My character Meredith is now the owner of the strip club where she was a dancer in book one, and it was really interesting to explore the challenges she faces being taken seriously as a businesswoman (though a bit depressing how little has changed from the 1980s to now…).

Cate: I loved writing the scenes with Justine where she has to learn how her identity is being used and, in many respects, weaponized by others. She has to recognize not just how she sees herself but how others see her, and really learn not to assume money, attractiveness and connections means good character.

Vanessa: I like the idea of what happens when you start getting what you want, mo money, mo problems, if you will. For the widows, especially Krystle who I write, she starts to get money, access to power and prestigious clients. But that comes with slippery morals and big conflict.

With four of you working on the novel, what’s the process like?

Layne: We kept basically the same process from the first book (which Cate explains in detail below), though this time we were able to meet up in person and do some IRL research, rather than googling everything like we did when writing Young Rich Widows in the depths of COVID lockdown. Think yachts, Newport mansions, and more!

Cate: We spend weeks plotting the novel and giving ourselves a roadmap of what challenges the characters will face and how those challenges will change them throughout the course of the story. Then we decide whose POV is best to tell certain stories and convey certain reveals. After that, we outline. Then we write, each taking out POV character. Every week, we go through each other’s chapters for consistency and continuity, as well as tweak the language of our individual POV characters in the chapters to make sure the “owner” of that character feels that their actions and words dovetail with who they are and their motivations. As we write, the characters sometimes take us to different places, so then we go back – usually around the midpoint – and have another intensive re-plotting/redrafting session, and we adjust the prior chapters accordingly.

What’s next for you all?

Kimberly: My solo book, The Expat Affair, publishes June 3rd from Park Row Books, and I’m already busy writing my next. And of course, there’s an exciting new adventure for the widows coming in book 3.

Layne: I’m working on a follow-up to my ice dance drama The Favorites for Random House. Desperate Deadly Widows will be my last Widows adventure, but Kim, Cate, and Vanessa are already hard at work on more totally tubular installments in the series!

Cate: I have my solo book, The Kidnapping of Alice Ingold, coming out on September 23rd from Thomas & Mercer. And we have the third book in the Widows series.

Vanessa: I started a new series focusing on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (the first was Blood Sisters) and the second book is out October 28th, called The Bone Thief, which is set in Rhode Island and delves into the past of the Narragansett tribe we feature in Desperate Deadly Widows.

Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?

Kimberly: I can’t wait to dive into Julie Clark’s The Ghostwriter – and I’ll be hanging with her on June 4th at Poisoned Pen. I’m also really looking forward to Chevy Stevens’ The Hitchhiker, out later this year.

Layne: I recently read an ARC of Sky Daddy by Kate Folk, which shares a release date with the Desperate Deadly Widows paperback, and I’ll never be able to fly again without thinking of Folk’s unhinged heroine Linda. Later in 2025, I’m also looking forward to August Lane by Regina Black, Play Nice by Rachel Harrison, and of course Taylor Jenkins Reid’s next book Atmosphere.

Cate: I am very excited for Vanessa’s second installment of Blood Sisters, The Bone Thief. And I’m looking forward to Taylor Jenkins Reid’s upcoming Atmosphere, which is set in the 80s like our books.

Vanessa: I’ll share something only slightly self-serving I just learned: my next book, The Bone Thief, is being released on October 28th along with two other Cherokee authors’ books, The Devil is a Southpaw, by Brandon Hobson and To the Moon and Back, by debut Eliana Ramage. So we’re calling it Read a Cherokee author day LOL

Will you be picking up Desperate Deadly Widows? Tell us in the comments below!

The post Q&A With The Authors Behind ‘Desperate Deadly Widows’ appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

We chat with author Cate Holahan about all things Her Three Lives, writing, book recommendations, and more!

Hi, Cate! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

I spend my days highly caffeinated mining my own anxieties for material. Many of my suspense and thriller stories stem from things that make me uneasy in my own life. For example, Her Three Lives, my new book, examines the smart home devices and cameras that I and so many folks have and whether being recorded in our private spaces might have unintended negative consequences.

How is your 2021 going in comparison to that other year?

It’s been mixed. I am very fortunate to have the book out and to be healthy and vaccinated! But I’ve had some illnesses and deaths in the family which have made it a bit challenging. Unfortunately, hospitals are still very much locked down because of coronavirus concerns so seeing sick loved ones is challenging. Sorry, that’s a downer of an answer. On the upside, I am looking forward to my kids returning to in-person school. They’ve been virtual for fourteen months, and I’m pretty sure they’re ready to see some of their peers.

Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!

The first book I ever read myself was a book about a monkey in a jungle. It rhymed. I was two or something and beyond proud of myself. I can still recite it to this day, but it didn’t make me want to be an author. Nancy Drew—the originals—were the books that made me fall in love with mystery writing. Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game was also a childhood favorite.

When did you first discover your love for writing?

I wrote and illustrated my first story when I was seven-years old about a kid who discovers a monster under her bed. My mom sent it into Scholastic for me. It was rejected. But they sent me a very nice letter telling me to keep at it. So, a couple decades later…

Your new novel, Her Three Lives, came out April 20^th 2021! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

Suspenseful, intriguing, entertaining, thought-provoking, and well-written.

What can readers expect?

I think the story will be a page-turner that will make folks consider the public, private, and secret spheres of our own lives and how technology is blurring the boundaries.

Where did the inspiration for Her Three Lives come from?

I was spying on my children. We’ve had Nest cams in my house since my kids were little so as to watch over them at night. Now, my kids are tweens, and I noticed myself threatening to go to the tape when they would have conflicts or I wanted to know who’d left clothing on the floor, etc. I started to wonder whether constantly recording their activities would have any long-term damage. Sometimes, a kid needs the freedom to leave socks lying around or have a conversation with her sister without worrying that their mother has it all on tape.

Can you tell us about any challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?

I’m a big outliner, so I always know when I sit down to write a chapter what I am hoping happens and where I’d like to go. Sometimes, the characters develop during the writing in such a way that the plot becomes forced. Then, I have to go back and replot or redesign characters and backstories and edit the manuscript to reflect the changes. But an outline really helps me stay focused on the goal for the day. I also write every workday, no matter what.

If it’s not too spoilery, was there a scene you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

I loved the scene when Greg first gets the cameras. I could see this guy, paranoid from an attack and suffering a traumatic brain injury, trying to protect his family in the only way he knows how and also how his injured pride was already undermining his efforts.

What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?

The best was to write every day, even if what you write stinks. You can always rewrite it or throw it out. The worst was to write what you know. Unless you’ve lived an incredible, heart-wrenching, crazy existence worthy of a page-turning memoir, what you already know is probably relatable but not all that thrilling. I think we should all work to write what we are willing to learn about. If we do, our excitement for the new subject will show through the writing.

What’s next for you?

I have an Audible book, Young Rich Widows, coming out in early next year, which I am penning with three other wonderful, bestselling writers: Vanessa Lillie, Kimberly Belle, and Layne Fargo. And I am working on another domestic suspense book for Grand Central Publishing about a family that takes on a tenant during the pandemic and then can’t evict her, even when they suspect she was involved in the murder.

Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?

I love so many domestic suspense and psychological thrillers. I am looking forward to reading the upcoming work by Wendy Walker, Riley Sager, Harlan Coben, and Liv Constantine. I thought Kate Moretti’s Girls of Brackenhill was deliciously twisty and awesome.

When I am writing, like now, I tend not to read in my genre. I recently read the near-future dystopian novel The Warehouse by Rob Hart, and I absolutely loved it. Less by Andrew Sean Greer, which won the Pulitzer in 2018 but didn’t hit my radar for some reason until this year, was also amazing.

Will you be picking up Her Three Lives? Tell us in the comments below!

The post Q&A: Cate Holahan, Author of ‘Her Three Lives’ appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

APRIL

Lies We Bury by Elle Marr

Marissa was born in captivity.  It’s been twenty years since she gained her freedom, but a new string of murders threatens to bring all of her secrets to the surface.

The Perfect Daughter by DJ Palmer

Grace has to visit her teenage daughter in the state psychiatric hospital where she is being held on a charge of murder.  Doctors have disagreed about a diagnosis of multiple personality disorder, but what dark and shocking secrets will be uncovered if she goes to trial?

The Truth About Unspeakable Things by Emily A Myers

After horrific trauma, Emma has finally opened her heart to love again.  She has kept so many secrets about the abuse she experienced, her past may destroy her before she gets her second chance at love and happiness.

Her Three Lives by Cate Holahan

After a violent home break-in, a family no longer knows whether they can trust anyone, even each other, as doubts, questions, and suspicions abound.  Gaslighting galore!

In The Company of Killers by Bryan Christy

A tightly wound debut thriller! Tom is an investigative reporter, but only as a cover – he’s also a CIA spy.  While he is on assignment in Kenya, his carefully crafted double life begins to fall apart, revealing truths that even Tom doesn’t know about.

MAY

The Next Wife by Kaira Rouda

Does anyone really ever ‘have it all’?  There is no limit to what some women will do to try to have it all, or to keep it.  In the name of love, or revenge, there is no limit to what a woman might do.

Find You First by Linwood Barclay

The master of psychological suspense is back with a deadly race against time when the unconventional heirs of a dying tech millionaire begin to meet mysterious ends.

The Hunting Wives by May Cobb

An elite club that focuses equally on target practice and martinis leads to a life of dangerous behavior, obsession, seduction, and murder when Sophie, her husband, and young son settle down in a small Texas town.

The Photographer by Mary Dixie Carter

After observing the wealthy and elite of New York City through her camera lens, Delta feels an uncontrollable desire to no longer be separated by the camera, and instead be part of their world.  Manipulation at its strongest is on full display here!

A Good Mother by Lara Bazelon

An exciting debut thriller with two young mothers in different positions in the same murder trial, where the decision about what defines a good mother has to be answered by the jury!

JUNE

The North Face of the Heart by Dolores Redondo (Translated by Michael Meigs)

A young but experienced female detective literally follows a murderer into the eye of a storm when she helps the FBI find a killer using natural disasters to hide his crimes and aid his escape.

Hairpin Bridge by Taylor Adams

The author of No Exit is back with a new thriller where a young woman refuses to accept the official police version of her sister’s death.  Lena is willing to fight for the truth, but instead may be fighting for her life.

The Fiancee by Kate White

What should have been a relaxing family vacation is turned on its head when a mysterious woman is involved.  An unexpected death further rocks the family, but was that only the beginning?

Hostage by Clare Mackintosh

The ultimate locked-room mystery, a claustrophobic thriller that takes place entirely on a twenty- hour flight from London to Sydney. A lot can happen in twenty hours.

Survive the Night by Riley Sager

Set in 1991, when help was not just as close as a cellphone call away, two people share a car ride when neither person knows enough about the person they are riding beside.

JULY

Choose Me by Tess Gerritsen and Gary Braver

When a young woman who is both beautiful and brilliant plunges from her apartment balcony, the detective in charge can feel in her gut that there is more to the story than meets the eye.  Discovering her sordid secrets provides more questions, rather than answers.

For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing

This best-selling author is back with a new thriller set in a prestigious private school.  Meddlesome parents, murder, Teacher of the Year, and overachieving students – what else could we ask for?

Her Last Breath by Hilary Davidson

When it is discovered that a woman predicted her own murder, her sister will absolutely not let the truth be brushed aside, despite being a pariah in her own family. Digging for the truth may come at too high of a cost, however.

Safe in my Arms by Sara Shepard

At an elite preschool, the principal is attacked and three moms who don’t think they fit in with the ultra-wealthy community work together to both find out who is trying to frame them as well as how to keep their real secrets hidden.

Silver Tears by Camilla Lackberg

Three generations of women have been hiding from one man, but secrets always eventually come out.  Betrayal and tears are sure to follow.

Are you as excited as we are about all of these upcoming thrillers? Are some of your favourite authors back with something new? Which books are you most excited to pick up? Tell us in the comments below!

The post Thrillers We Are Eagerly Anticipating In The Next Few Months appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

No one is innocent in this Hamptons-set thriller in which three combustible couples convene for a weekend of indulgent luxury which quickly curdles into murder and recrimination. Author Cate Holahan firmly places a reader into the rarefied realm of wealth and privilege barely suppressing a bubbling cauldron of corruption, abuse, adultery and crippling insecurity, the market territory which Liane Moriarty (Big Little Lies) has practically trademarked recently.

In alternating chapters detailing the conflicts and confrontations that lead up to the act of violence, and the desperation and suspicions released in its immediate wake, Holahan cleverly and skilfully manipulates the reader’s perceptions moment-to-moment, playfully rearranging the puzzle pieces so that presumptions are regularly undermined and shifted. Just as newly promoted detective sergeant Gabby Watkins, attempting to retain her composure through in-house resentment targeting her gender and race, struggles and bumbles from one certainty of guilt to the next, so, too, does the reader. Each character is shown more than capable of dirty deeds and just as soon as culpability is established, a revelation about another character will topple assumption.

The fatal weekend is set in motion by recent transplant Susan Ahmadi, craving entry into the upper echelon of this high-stakes society. She organises the rental of a beachside property so that she and her husband can get to better know their influential neighbours, as they were linked solely by their respective kids’ relationships. As matters unfold, however, it is clear that there are dark and twisted entanglements already in play between the adults. Susan, on indeterminate hiatus from her former law profession, now full-time mother to three including an autistic son, is supporting her venture capitalist husband Nadal who is attempting to establish a new, potentially lucrative medical app.

Nadal, wholly consumed in the days leading up to its IPO, has absented himself from his wife and family. Louis Murray, an ER physician with a troubling, controlling personality is married to Jenny, an erstwhile orthopaedist-turned-tv sports commentator. Currently, she is also full-time makeup artist, attempting to hide (unsuccessfully) the marks and bruises her husband so freely and fiercely provides. Driven, ruthless lawyer Rachel Klein is increasingly frustrated at husband Ben Hansen’s lazy and non-committed approach to a once-burgeoning writing career, leading to argumentative tumult. Tensions are high as the group gathers at the waterfront home, and only magnify as revelations steadily build and spill over.

Holahan cuts to the quick with a brief, visceral prologue detailing the frantic, clammy final moments of the murder victim, then transitions into a seemingly incongruous opening sequence. This sees Gabby investigating the sexual assault claims of an au pair who attended a house party hosted by a group of adult men, a scenario that will eventually come to serve a crucial role in the central mystery. This scene also sets up a theme, although quite modestly explored, of the anxieties and frustrations of those who may be considered outsiders to ruling social hierarchies. Both Jenny and Gabby are black women in an otherwise exclusively white community and Nadal is Middle Eastern. Even Susan herself, new to the neighbourhood, currently without the status of high-powered career with which to compete with her peers, can be viewed as unworthy interloper by the haughty standards of the neighbourhood.

Hysteria is the ruling impulse, fuelled by a steady flow of alcohol, misunderstandings, and misperceptions accruing at an alarming rate as the sextet continually section off to secretive pairings and closed cabals, which amps up the friction and paranoia. Holahan’s true subject is marriage itself, suggesting its strangely destabilising effects over time, the ways in which it strikes disconcertingly at the core of self and consciousness. Throughout, there are some movingly written paragraphs on the institution—its potential for both elation and exhaustion, enlargement and belittlement, enchantment and disillusionment, amplification and erasure—all of which a reader sees play out between the main cast of characters. Given the marital dynamics on display, and the hothouse behaviours, Holahan convincingly illustrates a situation in which murder is more than a likely result from relationships gone toxically dysfunctional. The victim is revealed quite early on, making this tale much more of a why-done-it than who-done-it, a sure sign that Holahan’s concerns lie outside the mere mystery.

As the cast of characters is extensive, naturally some emerge more sharply than others—a few register weakly as mere embodiments of a specific trait, not fully coherent. Yet Holahan hurtles the pace along with such expert breathlessness that the at times thin characterisation hardly matters—and really, a sure pace is the more central requirement for a successful suspense thriller. Ultimately, Holahan speeds straight past the resolution of the primary mystery with the final chapter set in a prison visitation centre a year after the close of the fateful events of the weekend, in which an even deeper mystery is interrogated, no answers forthcoming. Perhaps the true “one little secret” of the title, certainty remains elusive, locked away in a profound personal recess, a record of a fundamental (if dark) covenant between partners.

A reader would hope that the children of these messy adults would have ample opportunity (at the start of the novel, they are off to summer camp) to spend as much time away from their nightmare parents as possible, if to spare them from becoming yet another casualty of consistently bad choices and destructively impulsive actions.

One Little Secret is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.

Will you be reading One Little Secret? Have you already? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

Everyone has a secret. For some, it’s worth dying to protect. For others, it’s worth killing.

The glass beach house was supposed to be the getaway that Susan needed. Eager to help her transplanted family set down roots in their new town – and desperate for some kid-free conversation – she invites her new neighbors to join in on a week-long sublet with her and her workaholic husband.

Over the course of the first evening, liquor loosens inhibitions and lips. The three couples begin picking up on the others’ marital tensions and work frustrations, as well as revealing their own. But someone says too much. And the next morning one of the women is discovered dead on the private beach.

Town detective Gabby Watkins must figure out who permanently silenced the deceased. As she investigates, she learns that everyone in the glass house was hiding something that could tie them to the murder, and that the biggest secrets of all are often in plain sight for anyone willing to look.

A taut, locked room mystery with an unforgettable cast of characters, One Little Secret promises to keep readers eyes glued to the pages and debating the blinders that we all put on in the service of politeness.

The post Review: One Little Secret by Cate Holahan appeared first on The Nerd Daily.