HAVOC
The New York Times‘ #1 Thriller of 2024
‘Highly readable, twisty and shrewd’ HANYA YANAGIHARA (on Instagram)
‘The most disturbingly enjoyable read’ EMMA HEALEY
‘Diabolically good… a taut, wicked masterpiece’ MONA AWAD
Eighty-one-year-old Maggie Burkhardt has left it all behind and 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 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.
Early readers are saying…
‘Absolutely brilliant and insane. I went in knowing very little about the book and I’m glad because it made it even more of a wild ride’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘I loved this book from the first page… The conflict between the old and the young in this cat and mouse tussle is brilliant. It’s a hard to put down novel and has a great twist at the end’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘I had an absolute blast reading this. Otto and Maggie are wild characters and their behavior is shocking!’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐
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 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. -
Lyrically written, with sharp, candid wit, this is a fresh, strange pleasure of a book -
This destination thriller is perfect for White Lotus fans -
Bollen anticipated the White Lotus craze with a series of thrillers in fantasy travel destinations… Bollen gleefully lays on the melodrama and teases out the unmasking of his very unreliable narrator, escalating to a cymbal-crashing finale of revelations and violence -