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Summary
Summary
"The bad man, Daddy. The bad man is after us."
Clara Solberg's world shatters when her husband and their four-year-old daughter are in a car crash, killing Nick while Maisie is remarkably unharmed. The crash is ruled an accident ... until the coming days, when Maisie starts having night terrors that make Clara question what really happened on that fateful afternoon.
Tormented by grief and her obsession that Nick's death was far more than just an accident, Clara is plunged into a desperate hunt for the truth. Who would have wanted Nick dead? And, more important, why? Clara will stop at nothing to find out--and the truth is only the beginning of this twisted tale of secrets and deceit.
Told in the alternating perspectives of Clara's investigation and Nick's last months leading up to the crash, master of suspense Mary Kubica weaves her most chilling thriller to date--one that explores the dark recesses of a mind plagued by grief and shows that some secrets might be better left buried.
Author Notes
Mary Kubica is a New York bestselling author. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and American Literature from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Her novels include; Don't You Cry, Pretty Baby and The Good Girl.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestseller Kubica returns to form with this chilling psychological thriller after 2016's disappointing Don't You Cry. One sunny day, while dozing at home with newborn Felix, Clara Solberg expects the knock at the door to be husband Nick bringing four-year-old Maisie back from ballet; instead it's a cop notifying her about a car crash that's left her husband in a Chicago-area hospital, already brain-dead. The news is unthinkable, almost as impossible for her to credit as the notion that Nick could have been speeding around a hairpin turn with Maisie in the back seat. But once the shell-shocked widow begins digging, it starts to look as though the accident-if it was an accident-could be only one part of their lives that's significantly more sinister than appearances suggested. Although Kubica allows an increasingly unhinged Clara to pinball too freely among various paranoid scenarios, she shows herself once again to be a master of suspenseful manipulation (and occasionally misdirection) with her shuffling of narrators and chronology. Agent: Rachael Dillon Fried, Greenburger Associates. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
When a dentist dies in a car accident, he leaves behind a rattled and questioning wife who must try to come to terms with his deathand what she suspects may be his murder.Nick Solberg practices dentistry in the Chicago suburbs, where he lives with his wife, Clara, daughter, Maisie, and newborn son, Felix. But when Felix is 4 days old, Nick is killed while driving Maisie home from ballet class. Although the girl is unharmed, she keeps telling her mother that a "bad man" was after them. Convinced that Nick's death wasn't an accidentdespite official police findingsClara digs through her husband's life and finds a man of many contradictions. Told from alternating viewpointswe hear from Nick before the accident and Clara both immediately before and then after the crashthe story weaves in and out of Nick's impending ruin. As Clara skirts telling Maisie her father is dead, Nick skirts telling Clara they're facing impending financial doom, hiding it any way he can. Clara's bizarre reaction to her husband's death snowballs into total denial that he could have engineered it himself; she continues to lie to her daughter, latching on to clues she's convinced will prove he was murdered. While Nick's narrative fills in many of the blanks Clara's finding, Clara remains in the dark about his activities and keeps dipping into her growing belief that Nick was murdered to point the finger at everyoneeven family memberswho comes into her line of sight. When all is said and done, Clara, who should be sympathetic, is not only a questionable mother, but also a not-very-reliable narrator who won't earn many points with readers. And after a big buildup, the ending falls flat and is forgettable. Overwritten and sloppy with an oddly polarizing protagonist. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Clara Solberg is expecting her husband and daughter to arrive with dinner any moment when an officer delivers the news that they have been in a serious accident. Maisie, her four-year-old daughter, has escaped without harm, but her husband, Nick, dies from his injuries. Nick is an unrepentant speeder, so it's unsurprising when the police rule his death an accident. But, in the days following the accident, Maisie has night terrors and wakes screaming warnings to her father about the bad man following them in a black car. Then Clara finds that Nick recently canceled his life insurance without telling her and that he was on the phone when he crashed with someone whose number she doesn't recognize. With her world upended, Clara sees evidence of the bad man in Nick's best friend, her neighbor's glare, and in her own family. Kubica's fourth stand-alone is a compelling, if sedately paced, portrait of grief and coping chronicled through a wife's determined investigation of the lies she's discovered framing her life.--Tran, Christine Copyright 2017 Booklist