Douglas Kennedy’s novel demonstrates once again his talent for writing serious popular fiction. The Pursuit of Happiness and A Special Relationship were both Sunday Times bestsellers in paperback.

That was the year my life fell apart, and that was the year I moved to Paris.

When Harry Ricks arrives in Paris on a bleak January morning he is a broken man. He is running away from a failed marriage and a dark scandal that ruined his career as a film lecturer in a small American university. With no money and nowhere to live, Harry swiftly falls in with the city’s underclass, barely scraping a living while trying to finish the book he’d always dreamed of writing.

A chance meeting with a mysterious woman, Margit Kadar, with whom Harry falls in love, is his only hope of a brighter future. However, Margit isn’t all she seems to be and Harry soon has to make a decision that will alter his life forever.

“Extraordinarily compelling.” —Daily Mirror (London)

“A thriller for people who don’t like thrillers; a romance for people who don’t like romances; a philosophical enquiry into the nature of truth and a thumping good read.... Nail-bitingly compulsive. Kennedy has done it again.” —The Times (London)

Genre: Fiction/Mystery