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End of Story
Cover of End of Story
End of Story
A Novel
Borrow Borrow

For fans of Knives Out comes a spellbinding thriller from the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Woman in the Window

"I'll be dead in three months. Come tell my story."

So writes Sebastian Trapp, reclusive mystery novelist, to his longtime correspondent Nicky Hunter, an expert in detective fiction. With mere months to live, Trapp invites Nicky to his spectacular San Francisco mansion to help draft his life story . . . while living alongside his beautiful second wife, Diana; his wayward nephew, Freddy; and his protective daughter, Madeleine. Soon Nicky finds herself caught in an irresistible case of real-life "detective-fever."

"You and I might even solve an old mystery or two."

Twenty years earlier—on New Year's Eve 1999—Sebastian's first wife and teenage son vanished from different locations, never to be seen again. Did the perfect crime writer commit the perfect crime? And why has he emerged from seclusion, two decades later, to allow a stranger to dig into his past?

"Life is hard. After all, it kills you."

As Nicky attempts to weave together the strands of Sebastian's life, she becomes obsessed with discovering the truth . . . while Madeleine begins to question what her beloved father might actually know about that long-ago night. And when a corpse appears in the family's koi pond, both women are shocked to find that the past isn't gone—it's just waiting.

For fans of Knives Out comes a spellbinding thriller from the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Woman in the Window

"I'll be dead in three months. Come tell my story."

So writes Sebastian Trapp, reclusive mystery novelist, to his longtime correspondent Nicky Hunter, an expert in detective fiction. With mere months to live, Trapp invites Nicky to his spectacular San Francisco mansion to help draft his life story . . . while living alongside his beautiful second wife, Diana; his wayward nephew, Freddy; and his protective daughter, Madeleine. Soon Nicky finds herself caught in an irresistible case of real-life "detective-fever."

"You and I might even solve an old mystery or two."

Twenty years earlier—on New Year's Eve 1999—Sebastian's first wife and teenage son vanished from different locations, never to be seen again. Did the perfect crime writer commit the perfect crime? And why has he emerged from seclusion, two decades later, to allow a stranger to dig into his past?

"Life is hard. After all, it kills you."

As Nicky attempts to weave together the strands of Sebastian's life, she becomes obsessed with discovering the truth . . . while Madeleine begins to question what her beloved father might actually know about that long-ago night. And when a corpse appears in the family's koi pond, both women are shocked to find that the past isn't gone—it's just waiting.

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About the Author-
  • A. J. Finn is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the global phenomenon The Woman in the Window, which was published in more than forty languages and is the basis for the hit film starring Amy Adams.

Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    Starred review from March 4, 2024
    From its gothic opening image of a woman facedown in a koi pond to its stunning cliffside climax, this spellbinder surpasses the high bar set by Finn’s bestselling debut, The Woman in the Window. Readers are immediately plunged into the world of Sebastian Trapp, a reclusive novelist made rich by a long-running detective series and notorious by personal tragedy. On New Year’s Eve 20 years earlier, Sebastian’s first wife and teenaged son disappeared from separate locations, and Sebastian remains, in the public eye, the primary person of interest. Recently diagnosed with kidney failure and given months to live, Sebastian invites—to the consternation of his second wife, Diana, and adult daughter, Madeleine—Manhattan crime fiction critic Nicky Hunter to move into his Victorian San Francisco mansion while interviewing him for a private memoir. From there, a cat-and-mouse game unfolds as Nicky and Sebastian, both charming but perhaps equally unreliable, chase each other through the labyrinth of Sebastian’s life toward the secrets at its core. Meanwhile, Madeleine receives unsettling texts from someone purporting to be her long-lost younger sibling. Given the grand surroundings and rich array of eccentric characters, comparisons to the Knives Out film franchise will be inevitable, but Finn cuts much deeper. More than a mere puzzle, this elegant symphony of ghosts and fog concerns the nature of storytelling itself—and the crucial art of crafting one’s own narrative. It’s a tour de force.

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    HarperCollins
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End of Story
A Novel
A. J. Finn
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