First published 2014
Richard Jury meets Tom Williamson at Vertigo 42, a bar forty-two floors above London's financial district. Tom believes his wife Tess was murdered seventeen years ago, though police ruled her death accidental. The inspector claimed vertigo caused her fatal fall, but Tom wants Jury to investigate the open verdict. Jury discovers that five years before Tess died, a nine-year-old girl fell to her death at the same Devon country house where Tess later perished. The child had attended a party Tess hosted for six children. Jury tracks down the five surviving guests, now adults, seeking answers about this strange coincidence. While investigating, an elegantly dressed woman plunges from a cottage tower near where Jury dines with colleagues. Her estranged husband dies soon after. Four deaths span the timeline, two from the past and two occurring during Jury's investigation. Jury and Sergeant Wiggins travel between Islington, Devon, and London, trying to determine whether the deaths were accidents and if they connect to each other.
Genres: suspense, mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: London, Devon, Islington
Period: Seventeen Years Ago, Five Years Before Tess Died
336 pages · Hardcover · Scribner