First published 2024
The night after her father's funeral, Claire goes to a bar and finds Lucas. He thinks it is a chance meeting. It is not. A misdirected email landed him on her list, and Claire intends to follow through. She takes him home. She carves him into pieces. Business as usual. Except something is wrong before any of that happens, because someone in that bar is watching Claire with the kind of attention that spells trouble. A blackmailer has spotted her murderous side hobby, and now Claire has a new problem sitting on top of her existing ones. She is already managing a weekly bereavement support group after her father's death and trying to get her art career moving. She does not need this. The central question is simple and urgent: can Claire eliminate her blackmailer before that person decides to talk? What follows is a comic thriller that treats murder as a scheduling conflict and grief as a Tuesday night commitment. Claire is not a tortured figure. She is a busy woman with a crowded calendar and a very low tolerance for interference.
Genres: crime, adult, adult-fiction, thriller, comedy, mystery-thriller
Vibes: dark, darkly-humorous, fast-paced, gritty, irreverent, suspenseful
Tropes: cat-and-mouse, dark-protagonist, unreliable-protagonist
Setting: bar
336 pages · Paperback · Penguin Books
Content warnings: graphic-violence, murder