End of Story
A Novel
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3.9 • 151 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
For fans of Knives Out comes a spellbinding thriller from the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Woman in the Window
“I’ll be dead in three months. Come tell my story.”
So writes Sebastian Trapp, reclusive mystery novelist, to his longtime correspondent Nicky Hunter, an expert in detective fiction. With mere months to live, Trapp invites Nicky to his spectacular San Francisco mansion to help draft his life story . . . while living alongside his beautiful second wife, Diana; his wayward nephew, Freddy; and his protective daughter, Madeleine. Soon Nicky finds herself caught in an irresistible case of real-life “detective-fever.”
“You and I might even solve an old mystery or two.”
Twenty years earlier—on New Year’s Eve 1999—Sebastian’s first wife and teenage son vanished from different locations, never to be seen again. Did the perfect crime writer commit the perfect crime? And why has he emerged from seclusion, two decades later, to allow a stranger to dig into his past?
“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.”
As Nicky attempts to weave together the strands of Sebastian’s life, she becomes obsessed with discovering the truth . . . while Madeleine begins to question what her beloved father might actually know about that long-ago night. And when a corpse appears in the family’s koi pond, both women are shocked to find that the past isn’t gone—it’s just waiting.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From its gothic opening image of a woman facedown in a koi pond to its stunning cliffside climax, this spellbinder surpasses the high bar set by Finn's bestselling debut, The Woman in the Window. Readers are immediately plunged into the world of Sebastian Trapp, a reclusive novelist made rich by a long-running detective series and notorious by personal tragedy. On New Year's Eve 20 years earlier, Sebastian's first wife and teenaged son disappeared from separate locations, and Sebastian remains, in the public eye, the primary person of interest. Recently diagnosed with kidney failure and given months to live, Sebastian invites—to the consternation of his second wife, Diana, and adult daughter, Madeleine—Manhattan crime fiction critic Nicky Hunter to move into his Victorian San Francisco mansion while interviewing him for a private memoir. From there, a cat-and-mouse game unfolds as Nicky and Sebastian, both charming but perhaps equally unreliable, chase each other through the labyrinth of Sebastian's life toward the secrets at its core. Meanwhile, Madeleine receives unsettling texts from someone purporting to be her long-lost younger sibling. Given the grand surroundings and rich array of eccentric characters, comparisons to the Knives Out film franchise will be inevitable, but Finn cuts much deeper. More than a mere puzzle, this elegant symphony of ghosts and fog concerns the nature of storytelling itself—and the crucial art of crafting one's own narrative. It's a tour de force.
Customer Reviews
I loved this book.
I thought I figured it out… boy was I wrong. Tripled. Also the writing is beautiful and keeps you deep in the descriptive clutches.
Meh
What an annoying book, too much dialog, not clear who is saying what. And just plain annoying to read, you just don’t care about any of the characters. I’m just skipping over paragraphs just to get to the end of this story.
Disappointing and confusing so far…
Only up to page 250 and I agree totally with Roberta8924. I very rarely give up on a book but I am considering it…the dialog is wordy and confusing -at times it’s not clear which character is actually saying what you are reading. Confusing and wordy mostly so far. I will finish it and keep hoping it gets better :(
Finished it -one of the worse books I’ve ever read - “It was written in some sort of fashion that made it almost impossible to follow and understand, also removing the simple pleasure of reading. “ another reviewer said this and it is well put.
So disappointed.