The Blue Hour
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the #1 internationally bestselling author of The Moment and Five Days comes a “completely absorbing and atmospheric” (Philip Kerr) novel about a woman whose husband disappears without a trace amidst the stunning, labyrinthine world of Morocco.
Robin knew Paul wasn’t perfect. But he said they were so lucky to have found each other, and she believed it was true. When he suggests a month in Morocco—where he once lived and worked, a place where the modern meets the medieval—Robin reluctantly agrees.
Once immersed into the swirling, white-hot exotica of a walled city on the North African Atlantic coast, Robin finds herself acclimatizing to its wonderful strangeness. Paul is everything she wants him to be—passionate, talented, knowledgeable. She is convinced that it is here that she will finally become pregnant.
But then Paul suddenly disappears, and Robin finds herself the prime suspect in the police inquiry. As her understanding of the truth starts to unravel, Robin lurches from the crumbling art deco of Casablanca to the daunting Sahara, caught in an increasingly terrifying spiral from which there is no easy escape.
For fans of thought-provoking page-turners such as The Talented Mr. Ripley, Douglas Kennedy’s The Blue Hour is a roller-coaster journey into a heart of darkness that asks the question: What would you do if your life depended on it?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Kennedy's (Five Days) melodramatic yet highly entertaining novel, a woman on vacation in Morocco learns that her husband has deceived her in a shocking way. Successful accountant Robin Danvers, after a failed first marriage, hopes she's finally found love and the possibility of parenthood when she meets the wildly talented, passionate artist Paul Leuen. Early in their marriage, his frivolous way with money causes friction, but a romantic trip to Morocco seems just the thing to strengthen their relationship, and maybe they'll conceive a child. When Robin discovers a profound betrayal by Paul, she leaves their hotel without confronting him, only to return to a ransacked room, blood on the wall, and Paul nowhere in sight, putting her at the center of a police inquiry. Kennedy effectively captures the wonders and the darkness of Morocco while propelling Robin on a fraught, dangerous journey filled with increasingly disturbing discoveries of Paul's many secrets. Though there are a few over-the-top moments, the story of a woman who must reconcile her intense love for a man who wasn't who he appeared to be, while finding her own strength, is an expertly painted one.