HAVOC

Thelma meets The Bad Seed meets The White Lotus in this Covid-19-era tale of an elderly American woman's murderous obsession with a troubled young boy at an Egyptian hotel.

The 81-year-old Maggie Burkhardt left her home in Wisconsin six years ago following the deaths of her husband and daughter. Moving from hotel to hotel, she spent five years in the Alps, where she perfected her unseemly skill at insinuating herself into people's lives to cause the breakup of what she deems bad marriages. "I liberate people who don’t know they’re stuck," says the widow, whose methods include planting false evidence of infidelities and relating false rumors. After both partners in one targeted marriage die—the wife by strangling, the husband by suicide—and suspicions point Maggie's way, she escapes to Luxor and picks up where she left off. Convincing her fellow hotel guests that she is a kindly old lady, she sets her sights on a young American woman, Tess, only to find her hands full with Tess’ psychologically damaged 8-year-old, Otto. He incurs Maggie's wrath with stunts like stealing a precious ribboned lock of her husband's hair and pretending to be her late daughter on the phone. Taking heavy doses of antipsychotic drugs, she becomes determined to kill the boy. Guests who threaten to expose her turn up dead. Others are arrested for crimes they didn't commit. Returning to the setting of his gripping novel The Lost Americans (2023), Bollen takes the art of the unreliable, self-deluded narrator to new heights. Did Maggie really have a happy marriage? Did her family really die? Is she really 81? (All the physical stuff she must do would suggest someone younger.) The ending of the novel is a bit slack, leaving plot strings untied. But it's still a wicked delight.

A devious and deranged thriller.