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  • Published: 12 February 2018
  • ISBN: 9780345476050
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

Ill Will

A Novel





A psychologist is unwillingly embroiled in two spectacular unsolved murders, one past and one present, in this haunting suspense novel.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Two sensational unsolved crimes—one in the past, another in the present—are linked by one man’s memory and self-deception in this chilling novel of literary suspense from National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon.

Includes an exclusive conversation between Dan Chaon and Lynda Barry

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Wall Street Journal • NPR • The New York Times • Los Angeles TimesThe Washington PostKirkus ReviewsPublishers Weekly

“We are always telling a story to ourselves, about ourselves.” This is one of the little mantras Dustin Tillman likes to share with his patients, and it’s meant to be reassuring. But what if that story is a lie?

A psychologist in suburban Cleveland, Dustin is drifting through his forties when he hears the news: His adopted brother, Rusty, is being released from prison. Thirty years ago, Rusty received a life sentence for the massacre of Dustin’s parents, aunt, and uncle. The trial came to epitomize the 1980s hysteria over Satanic cults; despite the lack of physical evidence, the jury believed the outlandish accusations Dustin and his cousin made against Rusty. Now, after DNA analysis has overturned the conviction, Dustin braces for a reckoning.

Meanwhile, one of Dustin’s patients has been plying him with stories of the drowning deaths of a string of drunk college boys. At first Dustin dismisses his patient's suggestions that a serial killer is at work as paranoid thinking, but as the two embark on an amateur investigation, Dustin starts to believe that there’s more to the deaths than coincidence. Soon he becomes obsessed, crossing all professional boundaries—and putting his own family in harm’s way.

From one of today’s most renowned practitioners of literary suspense, Ill Will is an intimate thriller about the failures of memory and the perils of self-deception. In Dan Chaon’s nimble, chilling prose, the past looms over the present, turning each into a haunted place.

“In his haunting, strikingly original new novel, [Dan] Chaon takes formidable risks, dismantling his timeline like a film editor.”—The New York Times Book Review

“The scariest novel of the year . . . ingenious . . . Chaon’s novel walks along a garrote stretched taut between Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock.”—The Washington Post

  • Published: 12 February 2018
  • ISBN: 9780345476050
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

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Praise for Ill Will

  • "In his haunting, strikingly original new novel, Chaon takes formidable risks. . . . I read the concluding sections with increasing horror; the ending, twisting in the author's assured hands like a Rubik's Cube, is at once predictable and harrowing. Somehow, it resolved nothing and left me shaken. I believed this could happen--I believed all of it--and the only thing more terrifying than that is the possibility of another Dan Chaon novel. I will be nervously looking forward to it." New York Times Book Review
  • "The scariest novel of the year . . . By now we should all be on guard against Dan Chaon, but there's just no effective defense against this cunning writer. . . . Chaon's novel walks along a garrote stretched taut between Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock. By the time we realize what's happening, we've gone too far to turn back. We can only inch forward into the darkness, bracing for what might come next." The Washington Post
  • "Outstanding . . . Following writers like Richard Matheson and Shirley Jackson, Dan Chaon writes in the spooky tradition of suburban gothic. . . . Mr. Chaon's writing is cool and precise, but his story is thrillingly unstable. It also boasts, at the end, a traditional horror-novel payoff I didn't see coming--Stephen King couldn't have done it better." The Wall Street Journal
  • "Chaon is one of America's best and most dependable writers, and in the end, Ill Will is a ruthlessly 'realistic' piece of fiction about the unrealistic beliefs people entertain about their world." Los Angeles Times
  • "Reading a truly terrifying novel can make you feel like you're drowning. . . . As Chaon moves nimbly between viewpoints, calling memories and relationships into question, a powerful undercurrent of dread begins to form beneath the story, slowly but inexorably pulling you under." Entertainment Weekly
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