Havoc
A Novel
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- USD 15.99
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- USD 15.99
Descripción editorial
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
A New York Times' "Best Thriller of the Year"
In the vein of The Bad Seed comes a twisty, atmospheric psychological suspense about a meddlesome elderly guest at a decadent luxury hotel who believes she has left her problematic past behind, until she decides to interfere in the lives of a young mother and her eight-year-old son, and finally meets her wicked match.
The war between age and youth has never been so vicious.
Eighty-one-year-old widow Maggie Burkhardt came to the Royal Karnak to escape. But not in quite the same way as most other guests who are relaxing at this threadbare luxury hotel on the banks of the Nile. Maggie, a compulsive fixer of other people’s lives, may have found herself in hot water at her last hotel in Switzerland and just might have needed to get out of there fast... But here at the Royal Karnak, under the hot Saharan sun, she has a comfortable suite, a loyal confidante in the hotel manager, Ahmed, and a handful of sympathetic friends, similar “long-termers” who understand her still-vivid grief for her late husband, Peter. Here, she is merely the sweet old lady in Room 309.
One morning, however, Maggie notices a new arrival at check-in: a mournful-looking young mother named Tess and her impish eight-year-old, Otto. Eager to help, Maggie invites them into her world. But it isn’t long before Maggie realizes that in her longing to be a part of their family, she has let in an enemy much stronger than she bargained for. In scrawny, homely Otto, Maggie Burkhardt has finally met her match.
A propulsive, addictively-readable breakout from the critically acclaimed author of A Beautiful Crime and The Lost Americans, Havoc is brilliant, twisty psychological suspense that will get under your skin like the most unforgettable Hitchcock classics.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An octogenarian Wisconsin widow faces off against an eight-year-old troublemaker in this first-rate tale of psychological suspense from Bollen (The Lost Americans). At the height of the Covid lockdown, the garrulous Maggie Burkhardt basks in her self-appointed role as social director for the guests at the Royal Karnak Palace Hotel in Luxor, Egypt—that is, until the arrival of young Otto Seeber and his mother. Though the scrawny, bespectacled Otto looks innocent, Maggie soon learns there's more to the boy than meets the eye. When Otto spies Maggie sneaking out of another guest's room, he offers to trade his silence for her agreement to upgrade him and his mother from the hotel's worst room to a $900-a-night luxury suite. So begins a dangerous chess match between the unlikely adversaries, each of whom is refreshingly drawn against type. As the mayhem mounts and the plot careens toward a genuinely shocking climax, Maggie's reliability as a narrator comes into doubt. Enriching the narrative with an evocative sense of atmosphere and playful riffs on The Bad Seed and Agatha Christie, Bollen serves up a nasty treat. It's a bracing ode to bad behavior.
