One of the Good Guys
A Novel
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4.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Fiction Novel of 2024 and Best Psychological Thriller for January • A Book Riot Most Anticipated Book of Jan–Jun 2024 • A Tertulia Best New Crime and Thriller Book This Winter • A Paste Most Anticipated Mystery and Thriller Book of 2024
Two young women vanish in a seaside town. At the cliff's edge, nobody is who they seem.
Desperate to escape the ghosts of his failed marriage, Cole upends his life. He leaves London behind for a remote stretch of coast, relishing the respite from the noise, drama, and relentless careerism that curdled his relationship and mental health. Leonora has made the same move for similar reasons. She’s living a short walk from Cole’s seaside cottage, preparing for her latest art exhibition. Though Cole still can’t figure out what went wrong with his marriage, and Leonora is having trouble acclimating to the hostile landscape, the pair forges a connection on the eroding bluff they call home.
Then, two young women activists raising awareness about gendered violence disappear while passing through. Cole and Leonora find themselves in the middle of a police investigation and the resulting media firestorm when the world learns of what happened. And as the tension escalates alongside the search for the missing women, they quickly realize that they don’t know each other that well after all.
From the critically acclaimed author of Our Kind of Cruelty and Imperfect Women, comes an urgent psychological thriller about gender, power, and how both are captured in our contemporary media environment. Unexpected and twisty from its first page to its last, One of the Good Guys asks: If most men claim to be good, why are most women still afraid to walk home alone at night?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of this unsettling psychological suspense novel from Hall (Hidden Depths), Cole Simmonds is trying to rebuild his life after a nasty split from his wife, Mel Connelly. He leaves his office job in London to work as a wildlife ranger along the southern coast of England, where he immediately becomes enchanted with Leonora Baxter, an artist who lives in a neighboring cottage. While the two get to know each other, feminist activists Molly Patterson and Phoebe Canton, who are livestreaming their hike along the coast as part of a domestic violence fundraiser, vanish. Cole becomes the prime suspect when a strand of Molly's hair is found in his outhouse. Hall then shifts the story to Mel's perspective. Chronicling the downfall of her and Cole's marriage, Mel recounts her fertility struggles and alludes to unsettling truths about her former husband. Soon, the hikers' disappearance captures public attention, with newscasters and social media sleuths alike weighing in on Cole's involvement in Molly and Phoebe's fates. From there, Hall begins to tie each of her story threads together with a series of twists about the disappearances and Cole and Mel's marriage. Her plot and themes don't exactly break new ground, but Hall keeps things moving at a brisk clip, and the thought-provoking conclusion will prompt readers to ask difficult questions about bad male behavior. Fans of Megan Abbott will want to check this out.
