"A thriller for fans of The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl...[with] a striking, original voice all Berry’s own.” —The New York Times Book Review
The riveting, Edgar Award-winning first novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Northern Spy and A Double Life
When Nora takes the train from London to visit her sister in the countryside, she expects to find her waiting at the station, or at home cooking dinner. But when she walks into Rachel’s familiar house, what she finds is entirely different: her sister has been the victim of a brutal murder.
Stunned and adrift, Nora finds she can’t return to her former life. An unsolved assault in the past has shaken her faith in the police, and she can’t trust them to find her sister’s killer. Haunted by the murder and the secrets that surround it, Nora is under the harrow: distressed and in danger. As Nora’s fear turns to obsession, she becomes as unrecognizable as the sister her investigation uncovers.
A riveting psychological thriller and a haunting exploration of the fierce love between two sisters, the distortions of grief, and the terrifying power of the past, Under the Harrow marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.
Named one of the "10 Best Mystery Books and Thrillers of the Year" by The Washington Post Named one of the best books of the year by The Atlantic
Flynn Berry is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers and has been awarded a Yaddo residency. Under the Harrow is her first novel.
Reading Group Guide
It’s Friday afternoon when Nora’s train departs from London’s Paddington Station. She’s headed to visit her sister, Rachel, who lives outside of Oxford in the small town of Marlow. With no other siblings or family besides their vagrant father, the two sisters are close and frequently spend their weekends together. But when Nora opens the front door, Rachel’s dog, Fenno, hangs dead from the bannisters and the walls are streaked with blood.
Even after she finds Rachel’s body and calls for an ambulance, Nora expects “Rachel to appear in the doorway. Her face confused and exhausted” (p. 8). Instead, a rush of paramedics and police swarm into the house while Nora sits outside in shock.
At the station, Detective Inspector Moretti asks if Rachel had any enemies. Nora imagines an alternative scenario in which Rachel escapes by killing her attacker. Then she recounts how, years earlier, Rachel had been badly beaten on her way home alone from a party. She was seventeen and had been drinking. The police “said they would be in touch if they identified a suspect, but of course they never did” (p. 48).
As Nora sheds her blood-soaked clothes, she wonders if this time will be any different. Her father is “an alcoholic. . . . He has a record” (p. 19). Along with Rachel’s former fiancé, their father will certainly be a suspect. But Nora fears her sister’s original attacker has finally returned to finish the job.
For years, Rachel and Nora combed the news, looking for stories about similar crimes. Then, five years before she was murdered, Rachel told Nora she was giving up. “She wanted to forget it ever happened” (p. 39).
A brochure from Victim Support explains how “life can fall apart after a murder” (p. 20). But more than Nora’s daily life falls apart. As the police investigation probes deeper, Nora begins to question just how well she actually knew her sister. The two spoke frequently, but Nora learns that Rachel kept many secrets, including the fact that Fenno was a trained guard dog.
Overnight, Marlow has been transformed from quaint to sinister. A week earlier, a car accident claimed the life of a young local. Now, Rachel’s murder has again plunged the town into mourning. No longer certain about the sister she thought she knew, Nora suspects everyone—including Rachel’s next-door neighbor and the local priest—but she distrusts her own memories most of all.
Spare, elegant, and deeply suspenseful, Under the Harrow is a mesmerizing portrait of two sisters trying to find their way in a dangerous world. And Flynn Berry announces herself as a writer to watch with a debut poised to take its place in the crime pantheon alongside Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train.
