A Lucky Escape

An elegant and harrowing tale of a handful of London strangers whose lives become irrevocably entangled by a series of random events, from one of our masters of psychological suspense.

On an ordinary day, Sam cycles to work and kills a man. A step into the road. A second too soon. That’s all it takes. By nightfall, Alfie is dead, his wife widowed—and Sam is facing the rest of her life as an accidental killer.

Sam’s older sister Maggie watches helplessly as Sam becomes consumed with gathering the pieces of the life Alfie left behind. Meanwhile, a viral news story reunites Maggie with a woman—once like a mother to her—who she hasn’t seen in many years.

As Alfie’s trail begins to take Sam to darker and darker places, and Maggie is pulled further and further into a past she’d be better off forgetting, both sisters begin hiding things from one another—things that could very easily turn one death into two.

As insightful and shrewd as it is compulsively readable, A Lucky Escape is a sophisticated and richly layered exploration of why humans do the dark and strange things they do, and the secrets and chance encounters—lucky and less so—that shape every life.