by Julia Dahl
Thank you to my incredible family: the “Chicago Dahls” and Nancy and Walter Urbach.
Thank you to my parents, Bill and Barbara Dahl, and my sister, Susan Sharer. Our two-religion household seemed odd to many, but we know it was exactly right.
This book is dedicated to my grandparents: Reba and Robert Blum, Jr., and Jeannette and Ernest Dahl. Your lives inspire me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julia Dahl is a journalist specializing in crime and criminal justice. Her first novel, Invisible City, was named one of the Boston Globe’s Best Books of 2014, won the Macavity, Barry, and Shamus Awards, and was a finalist for an Edgar Award and a Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her acclaimed second novel, Run You Down, was published in 2016. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
Run You Down
Conviction
Also by Julia Dahl
Run You Down
Follow-up to the prize-winning debut, Invisible City, Run You Down is a taut mystery and a brilliant exploration of the demons we inherit.
Aviva Kagan was just a teenager when she left her Hasidic Jewish life in Brooklyn for a fling with a smiling college boy from Florida. A few months later she was pregnant, engaged to be married and trapped in a life she never imagined. So, shortly after the birth of her daughter she disappeared.
Twenty-three years later, the child she walked away from, NYC tabloid reporter Rebekah Roberts, wants nothing to do with her. But when a man from the ultra-Orthodox enclave of Roseville contacts Rebekah about his young wife’s mysterious death, she is drawn into Aviva’s old world, and a hidden culture full of dangerous secrets and frustrations.
‘Dahl writes deftly about race, religion and politics in NYC.’ New York Magazine
‘The smart, twisty plot and suspenseful tone will grip mystery and thriller lovers until the final page.’ Library Journal
‘A strong sequel … Aviva emerges as a woman with the great strength to survive suffering on a biblical scale.’ New York Times Book Review
Conviction
‘A thrilling, utterly absorbing crime novel … it jolts the heart.’ Megan Abbott
Journalist Rebekah Roberts works at New York City’s sleaziest tabloid, but dreams of bigger things. When she receives a letter from a convicted murderer claiming his innocence, she sees both a story she can’t ignore and, possibly, a chance.
Twenty-two years earlier, just after the Crown Heights riots exploded between the black and Jewish neighbourhoods in Brooklyn, DeShawn Perkins was convicted of the brutal murder of his adoptive family. Rebekah’s search for the truth is obscured by the decades that have elapsed: almost no one wants to talk about that grim, violent time in New York City – not even Saul Katz, a former NYPD cop and once her inside source.
A searing exploration of the tensions between New York’s closed communities, Conviction is a novel about the power – and cost – of loyalty and denial.
‘New York City crime at its very best: gritty, realistic, culturally complex and sometimes really terrifying, but ultimately full of hope, with a heroine you can’t help but root for.’ Lisa Lutz
‘A suspenseful and compulsive page-turner.’ Boston Globe
‘A murder mystery for our tumultuous times … Dahl writes deftly about race, religion, and politics in NYC, both then and now.’ New York Magazine
COPYRIGHT
First published in the UK in 2018
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
Published in the USA in 2014
by Minotaur Books
an imprint of Macmillan
St Martin’s Press
175 Fifth Avenue
New York NY 10010
This ebook edition first published in 2018
All rights reserved
© Julia Dahl, 2014
Cover design by Faber
Cover image © EschCollection / Getty
The right of Julia Dahl to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–34777–3
