Bleeding Heart Yard

A reunion of the class of 1998 at London’s posh Manor Park school, “where trendy lefties send their kids,” provides the backdrop for this stunning standalone from Edgar winner Griffiths (The Postscript Murder). One attendee, Det. Sgt. Cassie Fitzherbert, believes she pushed a classmate to his death on the rails of an abandoned underground tube station 21 years earlier, but could her memory be faulty? At Manor Park, Cassie was close friends with members of the Group, who used to meet in the attic of the home of Garfield Rice, now a Conservative MP. Every Group member has since had a successful career, except for EFL teacher Anna Vance, who’s “definitely hiding something.” Past crushes, jealousies, and buried passions surface, culminating in Rice’s “unexplained” death in the loo, traces of cocaine on his lips. The stabbing murder of another MP at a dining club in Bleeding Heart Yard, a courtyard in Holborn, raises the stakes. Jaw-dropping red herrings, headbanging twists and turns, and Rashomon-like alternating narratives add to the briskly paced plot, which builds to a reconstruction of the original crime and a bombshell revelation. Donna Tartt fans won’t be able to put this one down. Agent: Kirby Kim, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Nov.)