Our Kind of Cruelty

January 22, 2018
British journalist Hall (Everything and Nothing) makes her U.S. debut with a disturbing psychological thriller. Sometimes there’s a fine line between crazy in love and just plain crazy, and for glossy London golden couple Mike Hayes and Verity “V” Walton, it’s one that becomes blurrier when, after years of all-consuming passion, V decides she wants something different. Or does she? Investment banker Mike refuses to accept her moving on to advertising tycoon Angus Metcalf at face value, viewing it instead as a new, higher-stakes version of the Crave, their kinky private role-playing game. Hall constructs a suspenseful plot that capitalizes on considerable ambiguity about her characters’ motivations, especially the key issue of the extent to which V, a scientist working in AI, might be manipulating Mike. But with the story unfolding through the eyes of the emotionally damaged Mike, who was abused as a boy, readers never learn enough about V and arguably a lot more than they might wish about a narrator whose head is an uncomfortably creepy place to be. Still, Hall is a writer to watch. Agent: Lizzy Kremer, David Higham (U.K.).

July 30, 2018
In Hall’s dark, disturbing thriller, reader Hendrix presents a chilling portrayal of narrator Mike Hayes, a London banker convinced that the love of his life is toying with him by marrying an ultra-wealthy, socially prominent ad man. For years, Verity “V” Wilton has been Mike’s muse and his partner in a creepy game of seduction they call the Crave. Prior to her wedding, V stopped communicating with Mike, but, as convincingly interpreted by Hendrix, he remains too infatuated with her to accept her rejection as anything but an invitation to play the game. Reader Matsuura’s V sounds initially polite when confronted by Mike, then bemused and finally troubled. Hendrix has a bit of fun with Angus Metcalf, V’s groom, making him sound fatuous and elitist, while Matsuura gives voice to several other women, including V’s icy upper-class mother and a needy business associate of Mike’s who tries to push herself into his life. But it’s Hendrix’s relentless, intensely focused Mike that turns Hall’s novel into something more than just another exercise in psychological suspense. A MCD hardcover.