“The Bad Seed meets The White Lotus…
A wicked delight.” —Kirkus Reviews
At the Royal Karnak Palace Hotel, under the hot Saharan sun, Maggie Burkhardt has a comfortable suite, a loyal confidant in the hotel manager, Ahmed, and a handful of sympathetic friends, other “long-termers” like herself who understand her deep grief for her late husband, Peter. In this luxury hotel on the banks of the Nile, Maggie is merely the sweet old lady in Room 309.
Maggie has come to the Royal Karnak to escape. But not in quite the same way as most other guests who are staying here during the waning days of the pandemic. A compulsive meddler, Maggie may have found herself in hot water at her last hotel in Switzerland and she just might have needed to get out of the country fast . . . but all that’s behind her.
That is, until one morning when she notices a new arrival at check-in: a somber young American woman named Tess and her impish eight-year-old son, Otto. Eager to help, Maggie invites them into her world. Soon, Maggie realizes that in her longing to be a part of their family, she has let in a cunning enemy who might lead to her undoing. In scrawny Otto, Maggie Burkhardt has finally met her match.
A propulsive, wicked, addictively readable breakout from the “modern master of the High-smithian literary thriller” (Electric Literature), Havoc is brilliant, twisty psychological suspense that will get under your skin like the most unforgettable Hitchcock classics.
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What People Are Saying
“Havoc is delicious, wicked, and utterly brilliant - a novel about age and power, a battle between two ruthless and fascinating minds. It sank its teeth into me from the first page, and didn’t let go.”
— KATIE KITAMURA, bestselling author of Intimacies
“Diabolically good. Gets you in its mad, twisted grip and doesn’t relinquish until the jaw-dropping end. Bollen is a stunning writer and Havoc is a taut, wicked masterpiece.”
— MONA AWAD, bestselling author of Rouge
“A lot of books claim to be Highsmithian, but this one actually is: A highly readable, twisty, and shrewd satire presenting as a thriller about entitlement, loneliness, jealousy, and the eternal friction between the young and old. Utterly enjoyable.”
— HANYA YANAGIHARA, bestselling author of A Little Life and To Paradise (on Instagram)