First published 2009
Jim Cutter is a landscaper living in Promise Falls, a small upstate New York town where nothing like this is supposed to happen. Then one sweltering summer night, the Langley family next door is shot dead in their own home. Jim and his wife Ellen knew the Langleys well enough for barbecues and their son Derek was friends with the Langley boy, Adam. But well enough, it turns out, is not the same as really knowing someone. Jim starts digging into who Albert Langley was, a successful criminal defense attorney who made a career of keeping guilty people free. The revenge theory makes sense until it doesn't. Promise Falls carries its own buried history: a corrupt mayor, a student's suicide a decade back, secrets that have been waiting to surface. Then Jim learns something that changes everything. Derek was inside the Langley house the night of the murders. The threat is no longer next door. It is already inside the Cutter home, and the killings are not finished.
Genres: fiction, suspense, mystery, crime, contemporary, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, fast-paced, gritty, suspenseful, tension-filled
Tropes: close-to-home-danger, investigation-spiral, secrets-and-lies, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Promise Falls, upstate New York
466 pages · Paperback · Orion Books
Content warnings: death, murder, violence