First published 2021
Philomena McCarthy is building a solid career with the London Metropolitan Police when a domestic assault call derails everything. The man beating his girlfriend turns out to be a decorated detective, and Phil's determination to protect the victim gets her thrown off the force. The victim is Tempe Brown, and Phil starts teaching her self-defence once the dust settles. The two women grow close fast. They talk constantly, go out together, trade secrets. Phil starts to feel like she has found a real friend. But small wrong things keep adding up. Incidents that have no clean explanation. Then a body turns up, and Phil has to face what she has been ignoring. Tempe is not who Phil thought she was. She carries secrets that go beyond anything Phil encountered on the job, and she will do whatever it takes to keep them buried. Phil is now caught between loyalty to a woman she genuinely loves and the growing certainty that this friendship was never what it seemed. Michael Robotham, author of The Secrets She Keeps, delivers a standalone thriller about how well we can ever know another person, and what it costs to find out the truth too late.
Genres: domestic-fiction, mystery, crime, adult-fiction, thriller, psychological-thriller
Vibes: dark, intimate, psychological, suspenseful, tense, thought-provoking
Tropes: betrayal, slow-burn-revelation, toxic-relationship, unreliable-narrator
Setting: London
Period: Contemporary
416 pages · Paperback · Hachette Australia
Content warnings: abuse, domestic-violence