HAVOC
‘Highly readable, twisty and shrewd… utterly enjoyable’ HANYA YANAGIHARA (on Instagram)
‘The most disturbingly enjoyable read I’ve had in a long time’ EMMA HEALEY
‘Diabolically good… a taut, wicked masterpiece’ MONA AWAD
‘Sank its teeth into me from the first page, and didn’t let go’ KATIE KITAMURA
A modern-day Ripley
‘A deliciously nasty tale of resentment and revenge’ New York Times
Eighty-one-year-old Maggie Burkhardt has left it all behind. After the death of her husband and the tragic loss of her daughter Julia, she fled her native Wisconsin and has spent the last five years ping-ponging between the world’s luxury hotels. Now she has finally come to rest somewhere she can imagine staying forever: the Royal Karnak Hotel in Luxor, Egypt.
Maggie is no sweet old lady. She has a nasty, nosy little habit: she spies on her fellow guests and manipulates situations to ‘liberate’ them from what she sees as unhappy relationships.
When an enigmatic eight-year-old boy, Otto, and his well-meaning mother arrive at the hotel, Maggie sees two easy targets. But she is more wrong than she could possibly know, and is soon locked in a death-spiral with Otto – has she finally met her match in a child one-tenth her age?
Crackling with the perceptive acid wit of The White Lotus and haloed by Shirley Jackson’s cruel, dark magic, Christopher Bollen’s new novel is a decadent and ghastly delight.
A deliciously nasty tale of resentment and revenge … Listening her describe her strange habits and her wacky opinions of other people is great, wicked fun … Bollen writes with wit and style about an increasingly unhinged battle of wills between two unlikely, and formidable, opponents -
A lot of books claim to be Highsmithian, but this one actually is: A highly readable, twisty, and shrewd satire presenting as a thriller about entitlement, loneliness, jealousy, and the eternal friction between the young and old. Utterly enjoyable -
Diabolically good. Gets you in its mad, twisted grip and doesn’t relinquish until the jaw-dropping end. Bollen is a stunning writer and Havoc is a taut, wicked masterpiece -
It’s the most disturbingly enjoyable read I’ve had in a long time! The ratcheting tension was almost unbearable, but it was so funny too, and I was rooting for the appalling Maggie despite myself -
Delicious, wicked, and utterly brilliant - a novel about age and power, a battle between two ruthless and fascinating minds. It sank its teeth into me from the first page, and didn’t let go -
Christopher Bollen has been a growing figure in the literary suspense world for a while, but this book should cement his place as one of the very best -
Bollen (The Lost Americans; A Beautiful Crime) writes acat-and-mouse psychological thriller set in a sprawling hotel located on the banks of the Nile. The cat might be 81-year-old widow Maggie Burkhardt, a meddlesome fixer. The mouse might be eight-year-old Otto, son of the mournful Tessa. Or it might be the other way around. -
An octogenarian Wisconsin widow faces off against an eight-year-old troublemaker in this first-rate tale of psychological suspense…. each of whom is refreshingly drawn against type….the mayhem mounts and the plot careens toward a genuinely shocking climax….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. -