First published 2007
Nancy Kissel stands in her luxury Hong Kong apartment overlooking Victoria Harbour, her investment banker husband Robert dead in their bedroom. At thirty-nine, she possessed everything wealth could buy: designer clothes, expatriate status, three children, and what friends called a perfect marriage. But that November night in 2003 shattered the illusion. Hong Kong prosecutors claim Nancy murdered Robert for his millions and her blue-collar New Hampshire lover. Nancy insists she killed in self-defense against an abusive, cocaine-addicted husband who forced brutal sexual acts upon her. Her 2005 trial captivates the expatriate community with months of lurid testimony. Meanwhile, Robert's brother Andrew, a Connecticut real estate mogul facing fraud charges, turns up stabbed to death in his Greenwich mansion basement. McGinniss traces how two brothers who dreamed of owning the world ended up murdered on opposite sides of it, and examines Nancy herself, a woman for whom having everything still wasn't enough.
Genres: mystery, crime, thriller, true-crime
Vibes: dark, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: abusive-relationship, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Hong Kong, Victoria Harbour, Greenwich, New Hampshire
Period: 2003, 2005
368 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster
Content warnings: abuse, domestic-violence, murder