Her hen weekend was meant to be a celebration. Instead, it's a reckoning.

Sophie's hen do should be the perfect send-off before her fairy-tale wedding. Instead, it's a disaster from the start. Gathered at her fiancé's family estate in Ireland are the women who have shaped Sophie's life — old friends who smile through decades of resentment, her future sister-in-law who's never liked her, and an uninvited guest from her past who threatens to unravel everything. They call themselves her nearest and dearest – but are they?

The drinks flow, the toasts are made, but beneath it all, the pretence of closeness is wearing dangerously thin.

By dawn, someone is found dead and Detective Sergeant Aoife Hanlon faces a locked-down crime scene and a group of guests who refuse to talk. Cut off from the outside world, with no phone reception, no neighbours, and no escape, something went very wrong at the remote luxury lodge. Aoife must untangle years of resentment, jealousy, and long-buried betrayals to find a killer hiding in plain sight.

Because while they all came to celebrate, one of them came to kill.

© 2027 by Claire McGowan, all rights reserved.

<p>Born in Northern Ireland, Claire published her first novel in 2012, and has followed it up with many others in the crime fiction genre and also in women's fiction (writing as Eva Woods). Writing thrillers for Thomas &amp; Mercer, she has sold over a million books and has had several number-one bestsellers. She ran the UK's first MA in crime writing for five years, and regularly teaches and talks about writing. Her first non-fiction project, the true-crime book <i>The Vanishing Triangle</i>, was released in 2022. She also writes scripts and has several original projects in development for TV, as well as having had four radio dramas broadcast. Several of her novels are also in development as television series. She lives in London and would love to hear from readers via the methods below!</p>
<p>Website and email via: www.clairemcgowan.co.uk, X: @inkstainsclaire. Instagram: @clairemcgowanwriter. TikTok: @clairemcgowanwriter. Facebook: www.facebook.com/ClaireMcGowanAuthor.</p>