The Night Swim

by Megan Goldin

Overview

“A blistering plot and crisp writing make The Night Swim an unputdownable read.” –Sarah Pekkanen, bestselling author of The Wife Between Us

In The Night Swim, a new thriller from Megan Goldin, author of the “gripping and unforgettable” (Harlan Coben) The Escape Room, a true crime podcast host covering a controversial trial finds herself drawn deep into a small town’s dark past and a brutal crime that took place there years before.

Ever since her true-crime podcast became an overnight sensation and set an innocent man free, Rachel Krall has become a household name—and the last hope for people seeking justice. But she’s used to being recognized for her voice, not her face. Which makes it all the more unsettling when she finds a note on her car windshield, addressed to her, begging for help.

The new season of Rachel's podcast has brought her to a small town being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. A local golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season 3 a success, Rachel throws herself into her investigation—but the mysterious letters keep coming. Someone is following her, and she won’t stop until Rachel finds out what happened to her sister twenty-five years ago. Officially, Jenny Stills tragically drowned, but the letters insist she was murdered—and when Rachel starts asking questions, nobody in town wants to answer. The past and present start to collide as Rachel uncovers startling connections between the two cases—and a revelation that will change the course of the trial and the lives of everyone involved.

Electrifying and propulsive, The Night Swim asks: What is the price of a reputation? Can a small town ever right the wrongs of its past? And what really happened to Jenny?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250219688
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	720,700
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

MEGAN GOLDIN worked as a correspondent for Reuters and other media outlets where she covered war, peace, international terrorism and financial meltdowns in the Middle East and Asia. She is now based in Melbourne, Australia where she raises three sons and is a foster mum to Labrador puppies learning to be guide dogs. The Escape Room was her debut novel.

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/08/2020

At the start of this outstanding thriller from Goldin (The Escape Room), Rachel Krall, the producer of the popular true crime podcast Guilty or Not Guilty, stops after a long drive at a diner near Neapolis, N.C., where she’s planning to cover the high-profile trial of Scott Blair, an Olympic swimming contender accused of raping 16-year-old Kelly Moore. After leaving the diner, Rachel finds a note on her car from a woman named Hannah, who wants her help in proving that Hannah’s older sister, Jenny Stiles, then 16, didn’t accidently drown 25 years ago, as was ruled, but was murdered. Despite the time-consuming Blair trial, Rachel is intrigued by the cold case. Hannah continues to leave Rachel cryptic notes, but refuses to meet in person. Rachel’s suspenseful and insightful investigation into Scott and Kelly’s families eventually leads to answers about Jenny’s fate. Goldin casts a searing light on small-town politics and how bias can affect the way people view rape victims and their alleged assailants. 150,000-copy announced first printing. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Co. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

03/01/2020

In Cry Baby, the British best-selling, Dagger in the Library short-listed Billingham takes us back to 1996, when his famed DI Tom Thorne was a mere detective sergeant wrestling with the disappearance of a young lad and the subsequent murder of two people linked to him. For No. 1 New York Times best-selling Carcaterra, it's Payback time as former NYPD detective Tank Rizzo joins forces with old partner Pearl to bring down a longtime corrupt cop responsible for getting an innocent man convicted of murder, even as Tank investigates his brother's suspicious death at the behest of his orphaned nephew. In The Wicked Sister, following Dionne's big-news debut, The Marsh King's Daughter, Rachel Cunningham has kept herself locked in a psychiatric facility for 15 years, believing that she caused her parents' death—until new clues about what happened send her out into the world where the real murderer could be waiting. In debuter Garza's When I Was You, bought at auction in a two-book deal, Kelly Medina distracts herself from missing her off-to-college son by obsessing over a young mother in town who shares her name—but then one of the Kellies goes missing (100,000-copy first printing). Goldin, who had a big debut with The Escape Room, returns with The Night Swim, wherein a true-crime podcast host covering a sensational small-town rape trial keeps finding letters addressed to her claiming that a long-ago drowning in town was actually a murder. From Heaberlin, best known for the LibraryReads pick Black-Eyed Susans, We Are All the Same in the Dark features a veteran cop whose efforts to determine the identity of a mysterious, one-eyed little girl found near a highway bring back the terrible night when she lost her leg. In three-time Edgar Award winner Parker's Then She Vanished, PI Roland Ford wonders if he can trust his newest client, up-and-coming politician Dalton Strait, whose wife has evaporated into thin air even as seemingly random bombings are bringing down government buildings in Strait's district. In New York Times best-selling Reich's The Palace, international spy-for-hire Simon Riske becomes a wanted man after trying to help a hotelier friend suddenly accused of blackmail and extortion and tossed into a black-hole Bangkok jail (30,000-copy first printing). Finally, perennial best seller Woods sends stalwart Stone Barrington across some very Choppy Waters in his next case.

Library Journal

2020-05-18
A podcast investigator covering her first present-tense criminal trial is thrown for a loop by a radical new development in a much older case.

Now that she has two successful seasons of Guilty or Not Guiltyunder her belt, Rachel Krall is ready to turn from reopening old cases to following one as it unfolds in real time. Champion swimmer Scott Blair is about to be tried for the rape and sexual battery of Kelly Moore, who attends the high school he graduated from the year before. Prosecutor Mitchell Alkins and rock-star defense attorney Dale Quinn agree that the two teenagers had sex on the night in question, but they don’t agree whether it was consensual. So Rachel’s come to Neapolis, North Carolina, to attend the trial, prepare daily summaries of every twist and turn, and assure her listeners that every broadcast “puts you in the jury box.” As the trial proceeds through an unsparing barrage of she-said, he-said testimony, Rachel finds the objectivity she’s promised her listeners increasingly compromised by her growing sympathy for Kelly. A far more serious complication begins even before the trial with a furtive series of notes from Hannah Stills, whose older sister, Jenny, was raped, beaten, and drowned back in 1992. Certain that her sister’s assailant, who’s never been punished or identified, will be present in the courtroom, Hannah writes that she’s finally ready to reopen her own painful past and reveal knowledge about her sister’s last night that she’s never shared with anyone else. But though Hannah begs for Rachel’s help, she fails to show up at every meeting she proposes, leaving Rachel to wonder whether she’s really a will-of-the-wisp—and incidentally, what these two assaults a generation apart could possibly have to do with each other.

Not as intense as Goldin’s blistering debut, The Escape Room (2018), but a remarkably strong contender for second place.

Kirkus Reviews

Praise for The Night Swim:

*A Book of the Month Club Book of the Year Nominee*

“Goldin’s prose is inviting, at times electrifying, and always sensitive in dealing with hot-button issues…well done.” —Booklist (starred)

“Outstanding…[Goldin's thriller] casts a searing light on small-town politics.” —Publishers Weekly (starred)

“Remarkably strong.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A blistering plot and crisp writing make The Night Swim an unputdownable read.” –Sarah Pekkanen, bestselling author of The Wife Between Us

Praise for The Escape Room:

“The pages turn themselves…a sleek, well-crafted ride to a surprisingly twisty conclusion.” —New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice

“THE ESCAPE ROOM works as the ultimate locked-room mystery…Goldin excels at illustrating the pressures of a Wall Street career.” —Associated Press

“Addicting.” —Time Magazine

"High wire tension from the first moment to the last. Four ruthless people locked in a deadly game where victory means survival. Gripping and unforgettable!" —Harlan Coben

"Fantastic. One of my favorite books of the year." —Lee Child

"Amazing...a thriller set in an elevator [that explores] the vast territory of people's worst natures. A nightmarish look inside ourselves. Simply riveting." —Louise Penny

“A shrewd, brilliantly structured thriller doubling as a takedown of corporate culture.” —Shelf Awareness

“There is clearly no happy ending likely for the four colleagues trapped inside [the escape room]; but fans of JP Delany and Ruth Ware will want to be right in there with them…a nail-biting tale of a corporate team-building exercise gone horribly wrong.” —Booklist

“Riveting…[a] tale of greed and revenge set on Wall Street…Thriller fans will eagerly turn the pages to see what happens next.” —Publishers Weekly

“Cancel all your plans and call in sick; once you start reading, you'll be caught in your own escape room—the only key to freedom is turning the last page!” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Smart and compelling... I devoured this novel!” —Karen Cleveland, bestselling author of Need to Know

“A sharp, slick, utterly engrossing thriller. This knockout debut hooked me from the first page and didn’t let go.” —Cristina Alger, USA Today bestselling author of The Banker’s Wife

From the Publisher