The Start of Everything

The envelopes are addressed to simply “Katja” above the name of a Cambridge college, but no one by that name attends or works there. The early letters are desperate; the later ones are angry. No one knows who the messages are meant for, until a seemingly accidental death involves the police.

Detective Inspector Chloe Frohmann is able to identify an anonymous body caught in a fen sluice gate as the letters’ intended recipient, leading from the University to the fens. Every year, winter flooding sweeps across washes, plains and roads. It was in this year’s flood that the body went in, months ago, and in the present spring’s warmth that it bloated and rose.

As the receding water continues to reveal hints of what happened to the dead woman, Chloe struggles against her partner’s theory of the case. Chloe finally makes a stand against him–even as she’s forced to confront evidence that he may be right, and lives hang in the balance.

“A masterful whodunnit! Winslow effortlessly weaves together separate lives with intertwined lies, creating a powerful web of small deceits and horrifying misdeeds. A must read!” -Number 1 NY Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner

FROM THE FIRST PAGE:
I rubbed my finger along the envelope’s triangle flap. It was sealed all along the V, except for a small gap at each corner.
I pulled the letter off the pile and down into my lap, under the table. No one saw. Everyone had their own work. I slid the tip of my smallest finger into the puffed-up right corner.
The printer stopped. It had been spitting pages for thirty minutes. Without the noise of its grinding and rolling as background, a rip would scream.
“I have to leave,” I said, standing up. It’s important to explain abrupt movements. “I have an appointment.” I pushed the letter into my bag, then threaded my arm through the handles to shut the bag between my ribs and upper arm.
I always sit at the end of the table so I can’t be trapped or nudged. Table legs touching mine are completely different from someone else’s knee. But today someone had already been in place at the end of the table, with papers spread out for sorting. Not only had I been made to sit along the side; I had to sit well in. Then she made her stacks, creating space again, space that got filled before I noticed it. Trevor had sat down next to me. Now he leaned onto his chair’s two back legs. There was no way past. I waited, bouncing my elbow against my bag.
“Oh, sorry!” he said, and pulled his chair in. I squeezed past, holding my breath. The back of my skirt rubbed against the windowsill. The tips of his dark hair brushed against my shirt buttons. I popped out into the small open space next to the copier. The door was only five feet away. If I lay down across the carpet, I would push it open with the top of my head. That’s how close it was.
But Lucy squatted in front of the filing cabinet, blocking the door. She did it deliberately.
“Lucy!” Trevor hissed. She looked up, and he stifled a laugh.
She closed the drawer and stood but was still right there. I turned sideways so I didn’t graze any of her body as I opened the door.
I was unobstructed from there. The corridor was empty. The receptionist in the entrance never speaks to me. I charged outside into the courtyard and stopped. The spring sunlight was so bright that I closed my eyes. The letter crinkled against an apple in my bag.
A hand came down on my shoulder. I shimmied to throw it off. Too close, too close. I snapped my eyes open. George is a big man. I took a step back.
“Er, Mattie?” he said. “Where are you going?” He rocked from one foot to the other.
“What?” I said. Another step. My heel hit the bottom step behind me.
“Mattie, I was coming in to get you. It’s your father. He’s had another heart attack. He’s been taken to hospital. I should bring you.”
The hospital. It would be full of people. There would be rules I don’t know.
“No,” I said.
“We’ll stop by your house first. We can pick up some things for him to . . .”
He reached out, and I smacked his hand. The contact shocked me. I don’t like to have to do that.
He made two fists at his sides.
I retreated up the steps, back into the registrar’s reception area. “Would you tell him to leave me alone, please?” I said to the woman at the desk. I stood sideways to her, facing a wall. But she knew I was talking to her.
George followed me. “Her father’s been taken to Addenbrooke’s,” he explained. “He’s Dr. Oliver, from Astronomy.” “Miss?” the receptionist said, asking me if it were true, or if I cared.
“I don’t have to go,” I said. “There isn’t a rule.”
“No, there isn’t,” she said. She lifted the phone, as if she might call security. Or not. It was up to George. He rocked back and forth again. He pushed air out of his mouth. He turned and left.
“Are you all right? Do you need an escort?” the receptionist asked. She leaned forward. Next to her hand was a calendar that had just the number of today’s date on it, and a dictionary definition of the word “anodyne.”
“No, I―”
Trevor was suddenly there, next to the desk. He must have finished the filing. It must be lunchtime. He had a jacket on. “Mathilde, a sandwich?”
“No,” I said.
“You left your notebook on the table.” He jerked his thumb back towards the office.
“It’s in my bag,” I said, squeezing the canvas mouth more tightly shut against my ribs. It had to be in my bag. “No, you left in a hurry. I can get it for you if you want.”
“No!”
This is just the kind of thing my father doesn’t understand. He thinks that just because the lists I keep aren’t embarrassing, they aren’t private. But they’re mine. That makes them private, even if what I write down is ordinary. It’s not anybody’s business what I keep track of.
“I’ll get it,” I said. I walked forward and stopped.
“Mathilde?”
One of Trevor’s buttons had a wild thread unravelling through it. It was right in front of my face.
He backed up until there was space for him to move sideways, and he let me pass.

REVIEWS

The Start of Everything is a featured alternate selection of the Literary Guild and the Doubleday Book Club.

“[Winslow is] brilliant at portraying the ragged fragments of these lives. What emerges isn’t a single killer with motive and means, but a tangle of stories crossing and colliding, stray intersections of incidents and accidents, misunderstandings and misreadings, all thanks to the myopia of individual perspectives and the self-centeredness of individual desires.”
– Art Taylor for The Washington Post

“Outstanding… A literary mystery, there are multiple viewpoints, the use of present tense and jumps in time. This dark thriller will bring chills and heavy atmosphere up to the shocking end.”
– Page Traynor for Romantic Times, 4.5 stars out of 5

“Winslow’s second novel is compulsively readable with a final twist; a treat especially for fans of Minette Walters and Ruth Rendell.”
– Michele Leber for Booklist

“Sophisticated and satisfying.”
– The Bookseller

“The author excels in telling the story through her intricately drawn characters.”
– Cambridge Style Magazine, June 2013

“This is no country-house mystery…. Winslow deftly delivers a complex tale with the psychology of each character scrupulously drawn….. [She] dances fluidly between short chapters of different viewpoints, creating a kaleidoscopic view of events [that] intrigue.”
– The American, July 2013

“[The Start of Everything] follows the hunt for a dead girl’s killer from the points of view of several different people connected by the crime, some unknowingly. Besides two detectives with tensions between them, there’s an odd professor, a college student/nanny and — the most fascinating — a young woman who clearly has Asperger’s, though it is never stated outright.”
– Kristin Tillotson for The Star Tribune, Minneapolis/St. Paul

“Intriguing and cerebral.”
– Frances Monaco for The Post and Courier, South Carolina

“Wonderfully complex….Themes [of] loss, grief, change, fear, betrayal, lies, parent/child relationships, forgiveness, and redemption are ripe for analysis.”
– Booking Mama

“[Winslow] entrance[s] the intelligent reader with sleight of hand, doling out information subtly and discreetly….Her fan base should be ever-increasing with future books.”
– Laura Strathman Hulka for Story Circle

“The setting is second to none, the beautiful city of Cambridge a lovely backdrop to Chloe and Morris’s comprehension of its sudden malevolence and their own misconceptions as to the nature of the crime.”
– Curled Up with a Good Book

“The Start of Everything has more than just a grand mystery at its heart. It has characters who are not merely quirky, but also strange. Wonderfully strange.”
– Kate Ayers for Book Reporter and 20something Reads

“A gripping whodunit steeped in lies and deceit and shifting truths that reinforces Winslow’s place as a master of psychological mystery. The Start of Everything is a testament to the imagination of its author, dazzling in its ingenuity and gripping in its suspense.”
– Kerry McHugh for Shelf Awareness and Entomology of a Bookworm

“Wonderfully ambitious….Utilises the effects of multiple narrators flawlessly…..The Start of Everything is a smart and creepy literary thriller that focuses more on the people involved with the crime than the crime itself…..Fans of Kate Atkinson, Donna Tartt, and Alexander McCall Smith will identify with the character-centric narrative.”
– My Cup and Chaucer

“Winslow covers a lot of big topics….the difficulties of living with autism, what it’s like to be a woman in a job dominated by men, what it’s like to come back after injury in a high-risk job, sibling rivalry, family dynamics….The writing is beautiful, funny, and smart, and the mystery itself is just fantastic.”
– Reader’s Refuge

“Above all, The Start of Everything is a novel concerned with identity, as well as our conceptions of it. How do we conceive of ourselves? If we believe that a person is someone they’re not, how does that change our views of them? How does that information affect our construction of the identity we’ve built for them? …This is a novel you have to work for, but if you’re willing to do that, then The Start of Everything is absolutely worth your time.”
– S. Krishna’s Books

“Winslow does not shy away from brutal subject matter or allow sentimentality in respect to her characters….Despite the complexity of its plot and uncommon depth in character development, [she] has somehow maintained an appealing lightness and accessibility to the novel’s text….The Start of Everything has the artistry of literature, the grittiness of a best-selling crime thriller, the complexity of an academic puzzle and characters you will not easily forget.”
– Booklover Book Reviews

“Winslow’s books blend intriguing mysteries, gorgeous writing and well-drawn characters, which is why we just can’t resist naming The Start of Everything our Red Hot Book of the Week.”
– She Knows

“The perfect mystery.”
– Devourer of Books

“Nothing less than stunning.”
– Book of the Month Club

“Completely, compellingly believable….you won’t be able to tear yourself away.”
– Bookbag

“A stylish literary mystery.”
– Compulsive Reader

“Deft and unusual.”
– Auntie M Writes’ Hot Summer Reads

“Immediately engaging. [The narrator’s] ways of seeing and expressing what she sees provide an interesting defamiliarization, which adds piquancy to the customary collection of clues and statements.”
– Book Oxygen

“Intricately woven….The reader gets to find out something and not realize the significance until later, and I just love that kind of reveal.”
– Just a Lil Lost

“A page-turning psychological thriller complete with a shocking final plot twist….a unique and surprising ending.”
– Lavish Bookshelf for Anglotopia

“This brooding, sometimes shocking, mystery, uniquely told through the eyes of five different characters, is as refreshing as it is penetrating…. [Winslow] has an enviable ability to juggle five stories into a cohesive and compelling whole.”
– Crime Review

“The Start of Everything is fraught with confused identities, lost objects, undeliverable mail, and mistaken assumptions…messy, twisty, and atmospheric….Nothing is tidy in Emily Winslow’s world – it’s a lot more like ours.”
– Newport Library

“The fun in this novel lies in following the trail of clues carefully laid out by the different narrators, right alongside the detectives….Halfway through the story readers will start to feel as though they have the mystery all figured out. Yet as they continue on they will discover that as one part of the mystery comes together, another part of the puzzle unravels, throwing everything back into question.”
– Virginia Beach Library staff picks

“5 out of 5 stars.”
– Sensual Appeal

“A masterful whodunnit! Winslow effortlessly weaves together separate lives with intertwined lies, creating a powerful web of small deceits and horrifying misdeeds. A must read!”
– Number 1 NY Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner

“Emily Winslow’s writing is uniquely perceptive and penetrating, inhabiting the minds of her characters with great subtlety. She is a precise and expert analyst of the darkest parts of the human psyche.”
– International bestselling author Sophie Hannah

“Winslow’s pace and language are assured, and the multiple points of view are deftly drawn. But it is the vividly nuanced relationships between her characters that will rivet readers as the story hurtles toward its can’t-look-away conclusion.”
– Sophie Littlefield, author of A Bad Day for Mercy

“There’s something so real in Winslow’s smart dialogue it’s not like you’re reading at all; you know these people. You’ll find your palms sweating out the dysfunction, awkwardness, inhibitions, challenges and brilliance of this fleshed-out, comfortable, uncomfortable, duplicitous and surprising cast of characters while Emily Winslow draws them and you into a carefully plotted and treacherous existence.”
– Amanda Kyle Williams, author of Stranger in the Room

“Marvelous. Every word flows smoothly and pulses with meaning. In The Start of Everything, Emily Winslow has crafted a riveting mystery layered with dark secrets, uneasy alliances, and tangled truths. This is literary suspense at its finest.”
– Carla Buckley, author of Invisible

“Winslow has managed to get under the skin of Cambridge, her adopted city, to create a story of wonderful psychological complexity. The Start of Everything is an excellent literary novel, as well as a compelling mystery.”
– Kate Rhodes, author of Crossbones Yard

“A novel of shifting and confusing identities, The Start of Everything is a teaser of a psychological murder mystery in the spirit of Nicci French or Barbara Vine. Emily Winslow assembles a kaleidoscope of characters, setting and motive that grips from the very first pages. Recommended.”
– Eliza Graham, author of The History Room