Havoc - Christopher Bollen - Top Book Pick!

Fiction

Rating: 9/10

Eighty-year-old widow Maggie has escaped her grief to travel the world, taking up short term residence at luxury hotels and sticking her nose in where it doesn’t belong. She justifies her meddlesome behavior by telling herself she is just trying to ensure that others know the kind of love she had with her husband. Is she supposed to just stand by and refuse to intervene when she sees someone in pain? If she exaggerates a little, or plants some evidence of naughty deeds, where’s the harm in that?

One morning, a new arrival catches her in an act of bad intent and a battle of wits ensues. Blackmail notes begin to arrive at her door, someone has clearly been in her room, snooping, searching, and has someone changed out her medication?

Has Maggie met her match? The sociopathy in the one upmanship these two engage in is mind-blowing. Each more twisted than the other with every move. Have I mentioned that one of them is an eight-year-old? No? My bad.

A brilliant, chaos sowing, psychologically terrifying story that is so reminiscent of a Hitchcock movie that I have no doubt if he were alive, it would be on screen in no time.

Book Pairing(s): The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson, The Good Son by You Jeong Jeong, Confessions by Kanae Minto