30 May 2023
‘Refreshingly original and laugh-out-loud funny’ – CLARE MACKINTOSH
‘Delightfully shocking and irreverently funny’ – JANICE HALLETT
‘If Bret Easton Ellis ever went to grief counselling, this would be just the kind of brilliant book he’d write’ – PHILIPPA EAST
I have a gift. I see people as ghosts before they die.
Of course, it helps that I’m the one killing them.
The night after her father’s funeral, Claire meets Lucas in a bar. Lucas doesn’t know it, but it’s not a chance meeting. One thoughtless mistyped email has put him in the crosshairs of an extremely put-out serial killer. But before they make eye contact, before Claire lets him buy her a drink, even before she takes him home and carves him up into little pieces, something about that night is very wrong. Because someone is watching Claire. Someone who is about to discover her murderous little hobby.
The thing is, it’s not sensible to tangle with a part-time serial killer, even one who is distracted by attending a weekly bereavement support group and trying to get her art career off the ground. Let the games begin…
Dexter meets Killing Eve in this superb thriller, perfect for fans of How To Kill Your Family and My Sister the Serial Killer.
Read the opening below.
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CHAPTER ONE
She looks about the same age as me, early thirties, and she’s piling the plates precariously. I wonder whether she’s in a rush or just enjoys the excitement of seeing how many she can stack before they fall. There are nine plates piled on the tray with a selection of cutlery on top. She turns towards the kitchen and hesitates. She’s spotted another plate. Surely not. She reaches for the tenth plate and balances it on top of the cutlery. I take a sip of red wine and look away from the waitress. The serious-looking men in serious black suits are standing seriously too close and staring at me. Are they waiting for me to talk?
‘Claire,’ one of them says, ‘like I was saying, I’m so sorry about your dad. He was a good man. One of the best.’
One of the best? What a curious accolade. Out of how many? The whole world? This room?
‘He was such a lovely man,’ someone else is saying now. Another solo voice emerging from a chorus of gentle agreement. They look like a depressed choir, all these men who used to work with my dad. The choir that charisma forgot.
‘Always so calm,’ continues the soloist. ‘In fact, do you know something, Claire? I can’t ever remember a time when I saw your dad rattled. Not once! In all the years I knew him, he never got rattled. No matter what was going on, he was always so calm.’
‘You’re so right!’ someone else is saying now. ‘He never got rattled, did he? It was extraordinary, now I think about it. I never saw him rattled. Not ever.’
I stand here, watching their mouths move, and wonder about all the funerals in the history of the world. All the funerals that have happened since the beginning of time. How many billions of funerals must there have been? Hundreds of billions? Thousands of billions? Trillions? How many billions in a trillion? And has there ever been a funeral, I wonder, since records began, that has seen such a peculiar overuse of the word ‘rattled’?
‘I remember one time, must be thirty years ago now,’ says another voice, ‘me and your dad, we were working together on this huge project and, let me tell you, the deadlines were unbelievable! Everyone – well, almost everyone – was panicking. The boss was panicking, the client was panicking, and I don’t mind telling you, I was the most nervous of wrecks! But your dad, Claire, he wasn’t one bit rattled. Nothing ever seemed to rattle him.’