ELEMENTS OF CRIME

Jim Goldman, a struggling young writer, is asked by a mysterious woman to travel to Mexico to recover the partial manuscript of a novel titled Elements of Crime. After his return, he finds that the presumed author of the novel has committed suicide and the woman has disappeared without a trace.

The partial found in Mexico tells the story of Jack Stiller, an established author in his mid-fifties, whose life has fallen to pieces after his wife, Sophia, was murdered by an unknown assailant. Unable to continue his work, Stiller hires a ghost writer, James Brown, to help him finish his new project, a novel titled Elements of Crime. But Brown soon concludes that Stiller has killed his wife and that his novel might be nothing more than a fictionalized confession to the crime.

Goldman decides to finish the manuscript by himself, given that its continuation appears to have been lost in Mexico at some point. While working on the novel, Goldman realizes that some of the characters seem to have counterparts in the real world, and that the boundaries between fiction and reality are more ambiguous than he first thought. He becomes enveloped in a world in which memory and identity are ever shifting and this new reality threatens to consume him.

Unsettling, innovative and utterly original, ELEMENTS OF CRIME is a gripping new literary suspense novel from the bestselling author of THE BOOK OF MIRRORS.

E.O. Chirovici has had a prestigious and varied career in the Romanian media and has also published novels and short stories in his native language. His first book in the English language, The Book of Mirrors was translated into 37 languages. He lives in Brussels with his wife.