This Is How It Ends

British crime writer Dolan (the Zigic and Ferreira series) delivers an intriguing standalone about a crime involving a London police official’s daughter and secret motives. Narrator and protagonist Ella Riordan, a police academy dropout and aspiring writer, meets the novel’s second narrator, Molly Fader, a photographer who documents protest movements, when a policeman bashes Ella during a peaceful demonstration. The two, now friends united by their revolutionary spirit, join forces to protest the real estate developers taking over Molly’s apartment building in order to build more expensive high-rise buildings while the dwindling tenants put up with horrific conditions. Ella, hoping to make the place a cause célèbre to enhance her revolutionary credentials, throws a party there. Someone from Ella’s past crashes the party and ends updead by Ella’s hand—in self-defense, Ella claims to Molly. Molly believes Ella’s claim and helps her make it look like an accident. Is Ella who she says she is, or are her real intentions nefarious? The novel is cleverly plotted; Dolan nicely ramps up suspense on the way to its shocking ending. [em](Mar.) [/em]