Now a major motion picture starring Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen.

“A superb thriller and a truly engrossing read.”—Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin 10

When Roy meets a wealthy widow online, he can hardly believe his luck. Just like Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, Roy is a man who lives to deceive—and everything about Betty suggests she’s an easy mark. He’s confident that his scheme to swindle her will be a success. After all, he’s done this before.

As this remarkable feat of storytelling weaves together Roy’s and Betty’s futures, it also unwinds the past. Dancing across more than half a century—decades that encompass unthinkable cruelty, extraordinary resilience, and remarkable kindness—it takes us right back to the beginning of their very different lives, following the twists and turns through childhood, an adolescence and young adulthood indelibly marked by war, and an adult existence carved out amid a world still reeling from its aftermath.

As Roy’s sins stack up against the burdens Betty carries, it becomes a story of salvation, and survival—and for Roy and Betty, there is a reckoning to be made when the endgame of Roy’s crooked plot plays out. Some things can never be forgotten. Or forgiven.

Nicholas Searle