Pulpit Fiction

She has written for the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and Maclean’s. She has produced for CBC Radio and has left footprints in the snows of Canada with her investigations of Conrad Black and Patti Starr, the former chair of Ontario Place. She has lost political races to two prominent figures, Chrystia Freeland and Bill Morneau. In 2016, this magazine named her Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths, an examination of the cost of deficit reduction, one of the twenty-five most influential Canadian books of the previous quarter century. Yet it’s possible that Linda McQuaig is destined to be remembered as a novelist.

To be sure, that may seem a bit like saying Benjamin Disraeli’s greatest legacy is The Wondrous Tale of Alroy rather than his work at 10 Downing Street. But give McQuaig her due: she has written a stunning debut, one that is captivating, fast moving, suitably perplexing without being...