Review: Havoc
Havoc is a thriller with an interesting set-up. It is told in the first person from the point of view of an octogenarian agent of chaos. She’s on the leisurely lam from some earlier incident gone wrong after starting to travel after the death of her husband. It is set in the pandemic, but that’s basically not a real factor in the story. Christopher Bollen occasionally invokes it as a difficulty in managing travel or contact but in another time plenty of other causes could fill those plot holes.
Overall, Havoc is well crafted and diverting. Our narrator is interesting, but obviously untrustworthy. If nothing else her justifications of her casually sowing strife in others relationships smacks of self-deception. A lot of the fun is figuring out what is really driving her and why.
And on paper the answers are interesting and satisfying. The plot gears all mesh. There are dropped hints that slipped under the RADAR. All the things that make a psychological thriller work are there.
But for me, the big twist just rubbed me the wrong way. I know it is just me, but the reveal just took me out of the story in a way I could not recover from. Probably worth a try if you are not me.