Every Last Suspect

Every Last Suspect opens with its victim: Harriet Osman, gravely injured and racing against time to figure out who attacked her, and why, before she dies. Nicola Moriarty builds the novel around the people in Harriet's orbit, each given their own perspective and their own reasons to want her out of the picture.

Suspects include Harriet's devoted husband, her best friend — who may also be more than a friend — and Karen, a seemingly perfect fellow school mother whose secrets started spilling out the night Harriet talked her into a game of Two Truths and a Lie. As the narrative moves between suspects, the novel gradually reveals the small betrayals and long-simmering resentments hiding behind an ordinary suburban social circle.

Moriarty's structure — alternating close perspectives converging on a single act of violence — keeps the question of guilt open until the final pages, with the neighborly friendships at the story's center turning out to hide considerably more than they show.