A DARK, RIVETING MYSTERY OF COMPULSION AND SUICIDE. Detective Mike Hoolihan has seen it all. A fifteen-year veteran of the force, she's gone from walking a beat, to robbery, to homicide. But one case-this case-has gotten under her skin. When Jennifer Rockwell, darling of the community and daughter of a respected career cop-now top brass-takes her own life, no one is prepared to believe it. Especially her father, Colonel Tom. Mike Hoolihan, longtime colleague and friend of the colonel, is ready to "put the case down. " Suicide. Closed. Until Colonel Tom asks her to do the one thing any grieving father would ask: take a second look. Not since his celebrated novel Money has Amis turned his focus on America to such remarkable effect. Fusing brilliant wordplay with all the elements of a classic whodunit, Amis exposes a world where surfaces are suspect (no matter how perfect), Where paranoia is justified (no matter how pervasive), and where power and price and pride are brought low by the hidden recesses of our humanity.

"Martin Amis (born August 25, 1949) is a British novelist. He is the author of some of Britain's best-known modern literature, particularly Money (1986) and London Fields (1989).Influenced by Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce, as well as by his father Sir Kingsley Amis, he has inspired a generation of writers with his distinctive style, including Will Self and Zadie Smith. The Guardian writes that ""[a]ll his critics have noted what Kingsley Amis complained of as a 'terrible compulsive vividness in his style ... that constant demonstrating of his command of English'; and it's true that the Amis-ness of Amis will be recognizable in any piece before he reaches his first full stop.""