I want to be a fly on the wall when this explosive drama is discussed in book clubs. The “good guy” whose behavior they will pick apart is Cole Simmonds; he’s recently separated and has left London for the rural English coast. There he’s picking up the pieces from a marriage that went wrong when the couple’s attempts to have a child, including the trials of IVF, were all for nothing. Cole’s wife Mel—he’s dragging his feet on the paperwork that will tie up all the loose ends—now seems to hate him and he can’t understand where it all went wrong. Mel’s point of view, meanwhile, only coincides with Cole’s in that both would agree that they’ve split up. He’s trying to move on and meets Lennie (he insists on calling her Leonora, our first hint at his controlling ways), an artist who also seems like a lonely soul. Both are pulled into the fray when young women on a nationally publicized walk to highlight the problem of male violence go missing near Cole’s home. The social-media firestorm ignited by all this will be matched by the conversations in those book clubs I want to lurk in, as Hall looks at toxic masculinity from every angle: the oh-so-innocent man who’s only controlling because he cares so much, the enraged men commenting about the case online, the system that ridicules women if they wait too long to report a sexual crime while torturing them once they do report. A gripping and controversial suspense.
