As loyalties shift and private damage becomes public, every character in this novel must reckon with the harm people inflict almost casually upon one another.

Auckland, 1987. Four lives become entangled across divisions of class, nationality and privilege: Maria, a young lawyer; her troubled brother Marcus; Leon, a volatile Czech immigrant; and Violet, whose apparent respectability conceals its own fractures.  Grimshaw combines the momentum of crime fiction with an unsparing psychological portrait of family life and social unease. Her Auckland is divided between affluent interiors and menacing pubs, populated by people performing sympathy, rebellion or sophistication while struggling against shame and self-deception. The crime is important, but Grimshaw’s deeper interest lies in its emotional aftermath: the way responsibility is displaced, guilt circulates and one person’s choices reshape another’s life.

Abacus, 2000. First edition. Paperback. Good condition with cover creasing, rubbing and edge wear.