Ruth Ware meets Shari Lapena in this internationally bestselling psychological thriller about the inescapable pull of destiny and revenge.

Norah Richter has recently moved from Berlin to Vienna, hoping to put her old life behind her. While walking to her new office one morning, Norah is approached by an elderly woman who utters these chilling words:

On the eleventh of February, you will kill a man called Arthur Grimm …With good reason. And of your own free will.

Norah is unnerved — many years earlier, something terrible happened to her on February 11 — but she chooses to shrug off the encounter as mere coincidence, until a few days later when she meets a man named Arthur Grimm.

Soon Norah begins to have a dreadful suspicion: Does she have a good reason to hate this man she’s never met? Could he be responsible for the tragic event in her past? And can Norah make sure that justice is done without committing murder?

MELANIE RAABE was born in 1981 in Jena, Germany, and grew up in a 400-person village in Thuringia and a small town in North Rhine-Westphalia. She has worked as a journalist, scriptwriter, blogger, performer, and theatre actress. The Trap is her first novel and is being published in fourteen countries. She lives in Cologne.

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IMOGEN TAYLOR is a freelance literary translator based in Berlin. She is the translator of both The Trap and The Stranger Upstairs, as well as Truth and Other Lies by Sascha Arango and Fear by Dirk Kurbjuweit.

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Fans of Ruth Ware should love this creepy psychological suspense novel from one of Germany’s hottest new crime authors. It drips with atmosphere and has a meandering plot that allows for plenty of reflection on the past … Raabe is definitely on my watch list for future books.

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