Book archived prior to archive date. I did not download ahead of time, unfortunately. Mistake won't be made in the future.

Set in the world of political activists and protests, we meet Ella Riordan who is the daughter of a former top policeman. She has rebelled against the establishment after dropping out of police training school due to a case of bullying. As part of a book launch Ella and her friend Molly hold a party at which events take a disastrous turn for the two girls and they end up hiding a body.
The book flicks back over events from earlier in the women's lives, giving us an insight into how their lives have become so entwined over recent times. Molly has been deep into the campaigning scene, having been active at such high profile events as the Greenham Common peace campaign and with Ella's more recent involvement in these type of events Molly has introduced her to some dangerous characters.
Who was the man whose body they hid? Why had he turned up at the launch without an invitation? The two women begin to mistrust each other, each worrying that the other will let slip their secret once the man is found. Once the story reaches this point the pace of the tale ramps up with new facts about each of the women coming thick and fast which make for a gripping climax.
Very well plotted and paced, my only problem with this book was that I would really have loved to have sat and read it in one or two sittings due to the way the tensions build as the facts spill out and I felt I lost some of the momentum each time I had to put the book down to do real life stuff (damn that day job!!).
Great characters and a nicely layered plot, I would definitely recommend this; some good discussion points for a book club read too.
This review will appear on my blog page at www.sandiesbookshelves.blogspot.co.uk and shared on my twitter, goodreads and facebook pages

A gritty and realistic standalone thriller which leaves behind the racial crimes unit in Peterborough and deals instead with the tangled lives of protesters against property development and the forced eviction of the long term tenants from council flats which could be turned into more lucrative high priced apartment blocks..

A dead body materialises and as suspicion grows, the relationship between the two main protagonists changes with a totally unexpected twist in the tail.

Exceptionally written and plotted as always by one of our most talented thriller writers.

This is an interesting book told in a challenging way and featuring some complex characters. As the story progresses more is revealed about the true character of Ella. Definitely one of those books you don't want to put down for too long; there is a need to keep reading to find out what happens next, or previously! Recommended.

Eva Dolan is a great writer who usually tackles interesting subjects in her police procedurals, so I was very interested to read her latest stand-alone novel This is How it Ends. And Dolan has proven once again that it is possible to include current affairs topics into an engaging thriller without bogging the story down. Both of her two main protagonists, activists Ella and Molly, are intriguing and make a nice difference from your average mystery cast. These are women who are defying societal rules, who swim against the stream, who are in trouble with police and live according to their own moral code. Whilst I didn’t love either of them, I found myself drawn irrevocably into their world, trying to work out what makes them tick. It is a very skilled writer indeed who can create such vivid imagery in readers’ minds whilst making them question the very topics that move the story along – and there is plenty of fodder there that could have come out of your evening news broadcast.

The story is being told in two POVs, with Molly narrating the present, and Ella featuring in the backstory that leads up to the trouble the women find themselves in. The relationship between the two women is as intriguing and multi-layered as the events described, adding a depth to the story lacking in many other mysteries. Whilst Molly is a seasoned activist who lives life according to the principles she fights for and is not easily cowed, Ella is the archetypal young and passionate keyboard warrior who is still finding her feet in her defiance of authority. Ella’s background of growing up with a father high up in the police force makes her character all the more complex. With Molly acting as both a mother figure as well as a role model for young Ella, it is easy to see what binds the two women together – until the events that threaten that bond.

I admit that I struggled a bit with the format though, especially Ella’s chapters, which are not always told in chronological order, and made me flick back and forth through the pages to see if I had missed anything. Of course Dolan is too clever a writer not to have a plan, and it all came together beautifully in the end, when the unusual narration style suddenly made perfect sense. This was one of those rare books that totally blindsided me with a twist I did not see coming at all. A very clever, dark and multi-layered mystery that will appeal to lovers of the genre that are looking for something a bit deeper than your run-of-the-mill story. I very much look forward to reading more from this author in future.

Eva Dolan has written a superb bleak and atmospheric psychological thriller that provides background of how the the horror that resulted in the Grenfell Tower disaster came to manifest itself. It covers the burning issues of gentrification and the social and economic cleansing of the poor and the working class whilst the property developers ruthlessly profiteer in London. Dolan gives us a rare glimpse into the alternative lifestyles and lives of the political activists, revealing their human rivalries and flaws. Young idealistic Ella Riordan is a blogger and activist squatting in a tower block where most tenants have been evicted, she is protesting at plans to turn it into luxury flats. She is holding a roof top party to promote her book, when she ends up in her apartment below with a dead body of a man. She is feeling nervous and fraught as she phones Molly for help. Ella claims it was self defence which leads the two women to hide the body in a elevator shaft. Repercussions from their actions follow.

The narrative is delivered from the perspective of Ella and Molly, Ella's chapters go back in time to the present whilst Molly's go forward in time. Ella, it turns out is a PhD student from a wealthy family background who has been beaten up by the police in a protest. Her family are less than happy with her political activities. Middle aged Molly is a principled and experienced campaigner with a long history in dedicated political activism beginning at Greenham Common, but there has been precious little reward in any sphere of Molly's life. The relationship between the two women is at the heart of the story, with shades of a mother and daughter dynamic. However, before long Molly begins to suspect that Ella not been truthful about what happened and their relationship begins to decidedly fray. The web of lies, deceit and murder becomes apparent and there is a huge unexpected final twist.

Eva Dolan has written an intricate, dark, low key, multilayered and beautifully plotted story of depth. She gives us an incisive, relevant, and insightful picture of grassroots political activism and issues that affect our contemporary world, making this a highly pertinent read. The disparate characters of Ella and Molly are complex and nuanced, snagging the reader's interest with ease. The story is full of tension and suspense as it drives to the final conclusion. A brilliant psychological thriller from a gifted writer. Highly recommended! Many thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC.

A well written crime novel with quite a few twists. Molly, a middle aged social justice campaigner has befriended Ella, a younger campaigner, who has a high social profile due to her prolific blogging and grievance against the police due to her brutal treatment at their hands during a protest march.
Ella calls on Molly to help her when a dead body is found in her flat. The book then goes backwards to unravel the story of the women's lives and how Ella ended up with a dead body in her living room.
I have to admit to becoming slightly confused at times as to who was who and what their motivations were and I had to go back and reread several chapters. Very relevant to current society, I did enjoy the book and there were a few twists I certainly didn't see coming.

Eva Dolan, This is How it Ends
Raven Books

Eva Dolan’s fifth book is a departure from her Peterborough-set ‘Hate Crimes’ series and a change in style from third-person narration in more or less chronological sequence to the voices of a pair of narrators in flashbacks as well as 'now'. The new book, a standalone, is hard work, not least because both of the women we listen to have so many unpleasant drawbacks. They are both political activists, the older of whom is a professional photographer whose experiences reach as far back as Greenham Common’s Women’s Peace Camp in the early 1980s. The younger one, currently writing—or, perhaps rather not-writing her Ph.D.--shares a commitment to stopping London’s demolition of housing for the poor to make way for luxury flats. Since the novel comes hard on Grenfell Tower and contiguous lower-rise housing, it could hardly be more of its moment. Dolan’s work has previously been published by Harvill Secker, by Vintage, and now follows her editor to Bloomsbury’s new literary crime fiction imprint, Raven Books. I emphasize this because Dolan has written exceptionally well on social issues, and this remains a strenuous characteristic of her work.
The new book is intended to be more ambitious than her previous style, more in tune with psychological suspense plots. It’s by way of being one of those complex novels which require the reader to keep track of a number of things: events, participants, other characters, bodies, when they happened, and if there’s something missing in one’s note-taking, starting from not figuring out the title. Since it is both stimulating and taxing, and since the challenge in such novels is precisely the reader’s willingness to work at what may or may not be hints, clues, or confusions, I’ll stop here, except to say that the ending is worth the struggle. Just.

Well that was a twist that I certainly did not see coming! The story of 2 women... a young activist and an older women who is like a mother figure. It jumps between the 2 women... before and after the body is thrown down the elevator shaft.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury publishing for a copy of this book to read and review

Four years ago I read Eva Dolan's first novel Long Way Home.  Set in Peterborough it was the beginning of a series focused on a Hate Crimes unit and featured DI Zigic and DS Ferreira.  I remember writing at the time that I was impressed not only by the quality of the writing but also by the rather harder than usual edge that Dolan gave to her main characters.  My only concern was whether or not centring her novels around hate crime would limit the variety of stories she would be able to tell.  Well, four years on, Dolan has moved away from her police procedural series and now offers a one off tale set on the other side of the law, among a group of anti-gentrification protestors who are attempting to stop developers making a fortune at the expense of those people who are forced out of their homes to enable the building of apartments that will sell for seven figure sums.  Whether this change has come about as a result of running out of ideas for the Hate Crime series, I have no way of knowing, but I suspect not.  This novel, every bit as well written and almost as well plotted as the earlier books, has an even harder edge to it; it emanates anger from every page.  It feels like a very personal response to an emotion deeply felt and it reflects well on Dolan's ability to control that emotion that it works as well as it does for as long as it does.

Ella Riordan is making waves.  Brought up in a police family, Cambridge educated and recruited into the Force, she then walks out part way into her training and joins the 'other' side.  Researching for her doctorate, she gradually makes her way into the confidence of many of the women who have been the backbone of protest movements since the days of Greenham Common.  Given her background, gaining their trust isn't easy but, when she is clearly the victim of police violence during a kettling incident, she is taken up by a protest veteran, the photographer, Molly Fader.  Molly is one of a number of tenants holding out against developers who want to pull down the apartment block where she lives and so, when Ella manages to raise the money for a book paying tribute to the people who are being displaced, Castle Rise seems the perfect place to hold a celebration.  

And then everything goes wrong.  Ella kills someone.  She immediately calls on Molly for help.  It was an accident; he attacked her; she struck out in self defence and he hit his head as he fell; given her history the police would never believe her. This is what Ella tells Molly as she gets her friend to help her carry the body to the nearest lift shaft and drop it down.  This Is How It Begins.  From this point the narrative line splits. We move forward with Molly as she gradually begins to recognise the consequences of their actions.  Her world is disintegrating around her.  More and more people are accepting the developers' offers and moving out.  Her closest friend, Callum, is questioned about the murder and as a result his past catches up with him. Worst of all she doesn't seem to be able to communicate with Ella any more.  Meanwhile Ella's narrative moves back in time as step by step we are shown what has brought her to this point: how she has extracted herself from the difficulties she faced at the Police College and built a new life among the very people she might have expected to oppose.  How she has managed to gain their trust.

And that is the word that echoes repeatedly through this novel - trust.  I lost count of the number of times it is used.  Molly questions whether Ella trusts her any longer and then finds herself asking whether or not she can still trust Ella.  Ella equally expresses doubt as to whom she can trust.  Trust, something that is central to any relationship, becomes a gift that sometimes felt like a burden. And when it is lost the sense of betrayal is another punch to [an] already pummelled old heart.  Ultimately, the question that Dolan is asking in this novel, and the force behind the anger that appears to drive it, is just who can we trust?  Who can we trust in our personal lives, but more forcefully who in society can we trust?  Who can we trust to protect us against those forces who are out for their own profit at the expense of everyone around them?  Her answer is bleak.

I don't normally read one off thrillers but in many respects this is much more than an off the shelf thriller. It is a response to a serious societal concern that is being raised by many people and, although the anger which propels the writing is apparent throughout, Dolan manages to successfully walk that fine line which keeps the work on the side of a good novel rather than tipping over into a polemic.  My only concern is the ending, where I think her plotting lets her down.  To me it is the easy option, the quick way out of a situation which has become so complicated that any other conclusion would have taken away from the narrative drive, but it is an option that doesn't ring true.  Perhaps the problem is that in real life there would be no such easy solution.  In all other respects this is another fine book from a fine author.

Eva Dolan is a stand-out in the new breed of British detective novelists for her refreshing take on the police procedural genre in the Zigic and Ferreira series.
In the three novels published so far, Dolan showed how, even in a setting that is not London, multi-culturalism, gender and social issues can be woven into arresting crime fiction. Her Fenland-based stories, featuring two cops in charge of the Peterborough Hate Crimes department, paint a picture of ‘provincial’ Britain that is a far cry from sleepy suburbia or cosy country squiredom, with the plus of extraordinarily clever, page-turner plots.
Besides the debut novel, ‘Long Way Home’, my favourite is the most recent, ‘After You Die’ (2016), longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger and shortlisted for the Theakston's Crime Novel of the Year, in which Dolan managed to add new depth to her protagonists - at least to gritty DS Mel Ferreira, a young women of Portuguese origin with enough punch and smarts for two of her male colleagues - and to spin an utterly brilliant whodunnit, leaving the killer’s identity well and truly secret until the very last.
‘This Is How It Ends’ is a new departure for Dolan, a stand-alone novel set in London, and right from the first page it’s obvious how she isn’t simply adapting an existing canon. Gone is the classic police procedural structure and, though there is a dead body in the first chapter, this novel is definitely more of a psychological thriller, if one needs to pigeonhole it.
‘This Is How It Ends’ is more ambitious than her previous works, in characterisation, plot structure and scope. Dolan works with a material which seems to have more depth, more volume, and she moulds and kneads it expertly, drawing unexpected nuances from it. Always with her signature clarity and sharpness of observation.
The story opens as young Ella Riordan appeals for help to her friend Molly Fader, both of them at a party organised by Ella to celebrate her latest book project. Molly finds Ella in an empty room, a dead man on the floor. She is dazed, stricken, and first claims she doesn’t know the man and had nothing to do with his violent death. After Molly teases something of an explanation from Ella – the man tried to rape her, she tried to evade, he fell, banged his head, died – they panic and decide to dispose of the body down the building’s unused lift chute.
One of the reasons they didn’t want to call the police is that both have a record, from their involvement in protest demonstrations turned out other than peaceful, and Ella was recently detained on suspicion of arson – at the premises of a London estate agent that attracted the attention of anti-gentrification activists - though she was later released.
Ella is heavily involved in the protests, fighting developers who are cajoling and/or coercing owners and tenants out of old London buildings, to renovate them at huge profit. In fact, the party in question was held in one of these buildings, Castle Rise, where Molly lives, to mark the success of a Kickstarter campaign to fund a book Ella is writing off her PhD work, an expose of unsavoury development practices and the political collusion that fosters them.
Ella and Molly are united by their civic convictions (and hatred of public authorities) but very different in age and background. Ella, in her late twenties, is a spirited Durhamite striving to make her mark as a civil rights activist, while Molly, in her early sixties, is an art teacher turned agitator and photographic chronicler, famously of the Greenham Common 1982 protests but of countless others too, including a recent one in Camden where she took a picture of Ella being clubbed by the police.
Their relationship is almost mother-daughter, with parental badgering and childish lying thrown in. But it’s also that of two partners in ‘crime’, of two friends, who are close enough to share details about their sex lives, and hide the body of a man who died violently, if presumably accidentally.
Dolan takes her time building the story, lining up its elements and slotting them into place, and in sketching the two women’s multi-layered relationship. Each scene is a carefully applied brush-stroke, each instance of omission by either Ella or Molly as painstakingly recorded as the respect Ella clearly has for Molly – it is through Molly’s old contacts that Ella is building her reputation as an activist.
Gradually, we learn of Ella’s wealthy, traditionalist family, her father a retired Police ACC, a man with savvy and clout who’d love to see her follow in his footsteps in the force. There is tension between Ella’s father and his daughter’s egalitarian streak, made worse as she becomes enmeshed, willingly enough actually, with Ryan Quinn, a dangerous agitator well-versed in orchestrating protests and fanning the flames of violence, who led, and was arrested and jailed for, the arson attack in which Ella took part.
Dolan gives us fully fledged characters and builds them up convincingly, though this inevitably slows down the story’s pace somewhat. The frequent back-and-forth in time, as we learn that Ella went to the Garton police academy, only to leave after being bullied and attacked by a fellow student, asks for a lot of attention on the part of the reader, especially those who may prefer a straightforward murder-investigation-red herrings-denouement kind of story.
‘This Is How It Ends’ is very different, in fact it’s in another league, both in plot and narrative terms. Dolan combines first (Molly’s) and third-person (Ella) narrative to skilful effect, paints fully three-dimensional characters out of Ella and Molly and the rest of the convincing cast, and recreates disturbingly well the pain and disruption the Castle Rise tenants go through as they face eviction.
As Dolan’s previous novels show, she isn’t shy in tackling some of the most disturbing issues of our times, from human trafficking and slave labour to disability and child abuse. In ‘This Is How It Ends’ she raises her game in this respect too, unflinchingly portraying the cultural and organisational shortcomings of the police force, and shooting unforgiving broadsides at unscrupulous metropolitan developers and their political connivers. Her critique is all the more effective as it’s couched in quality writing and balanced insights.
Above all, ‘This Is How It Ends’ is about exploitation, and not just the economic and social type, though both play major parts in the plot. Using those as a grim backdrop, Dolan zeroes in unerringly on individual, personal exploitation, the kind that lurks just beneath the veneer of every relationship in the novel: Molly and Ella, Ella and her occasional lover Dylan, Molly and her own occasional lover Callum, Ella and the tenants and homeowners she's campaigning for.
Even when it’s innocent, almost involuntary, the exploitation of one another’s very human weaknesses is always there, in the small gestures as in the grander ones, all of them narrated by Dolan with a sharpness and directness which are the hallmarks of a remarkable authorial talent.

The story features other, darker kinds of exploitation, but they are best left for readers to discover, or be surprised by, as Dolan packs a dynamite load of surprise twists in the narrative, to the very end. A bitter end indeed, in-keeping with the bleakness of tone which pervades the novel, as is inevitable given the harshness of its underlying themes, but rendered with an abundance of authorial poise that bides well for Dolan’s future efforts, which we’re very much looking forward to.

Where do I start, this is one of the most unique kind of read for me. A good-layered crime book that is narrated between the two main characters Ella and Molly. Ella narrates from the then perspective and Molly from the now. There is a male dead after Ella's party so she calls Molly for help. A string of lies and a cover up and you have a good plot. I liked the fact the women were unlike friends in age however there principles in life have joined them. I normally enjoy the now and then writing however I felt a little lost at times for this reason I feel the book didn't give me the wow factor I was looking for.

this really hit me hard after a confused start - talk about an unreliable narrator - and to relieve the pressure, the author cleverly has two (and sometimes more) speakers - great friends, until a shocking death occurs, and all is not as it seems .. and we don't even realise it until the evidence starts piling up - the police get taken in too. in some ways there's a bubbling love story under all this too .. I was taken in, and I did not however feel cheated - it all fell into place - there are twists right up until the end, and growing horror - I read faster and faster as I went. wow.

A thoroughly modern book with a very intriguing premise. Eva Dolan has created a novel that puts the reader firmly on the back foot - who should we trust, who should we have sympathy with, is all as it seems? This book is disorientating and compelling and I was second guessing at every turn.

I thought the setting was perfect - a tower block about to be knocked down and a group of people campaigning against it which highlighted modern social injustices. The addition of a dead body, its concealment and the subsequent fall out was well plotted, intriguing and wonderful storytelling.

I will post a full review of this book nearer release date on my blog and will post links on social media including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I will also leave full reviews on GoodReads and Amazon.

I really enjoyed this book. Great storyline, wonderful main characters and a very good read. I would recommend this book.

I'm a big fan of Eva's series, so had high hopes for this, and wasn't;t disappointed. The way she splices the chapters together between the timelines works a treat. As ever, the characters are fully formed and jump at out you, larger than life, but Eva Dolan keeps you guessing as to who you can trust, and who to be wary of. I've already recommended it to a few people, and she's kept her place on my automatic TBR pile every time a new one comes out.

Admittedly I prefer the author's Zigic series but this is a cleverly written standalone read.
For most of the book the author makes you believe that Ella is nothing more than a manipulative, spoiled brat but there are a few unexpected twists towards the conclusion.

Well to be honest I’m not sure where to begin. I’m certainly sure that the end has left me with that melancholy, low key buzz of a feeling that all real readers will know when they’ve just finished a novel that will linger in the senses and be the benchmark for future reads for a long long time to come.

Eva Dolan’s Zigic and Ferreira series is one of the best, most authentic police series out there but This Is How It Ends enters a whole new league of subtle brilliance that defies explanation in any kind of review – things to note though are the beautifully immersive writing, the insightful and deeply layered characters and the ability to recreate the world we are living in without need for filter or fuss. Socially relevant, entertaining yes but also utterly genuine and just getting you right in the heart.

This Is How It Ends is masterfully plotted – A party, a body and two friends who live in a world of protest and activism, suddenly faced with a moral dilemma – This is how it began…

I’m not telling you anymore about the detailed plot than that and I hope HOPE that not many reviewers coming after me do either. This is a masterclass of suspense and character study, peeling back layers of both the fact and the fiction of these two women, until you are left with how it ends. If you know almost anything else it won’t have the same impact – and it does have impact, trust me on that one. I was blown away by the ultimate resolution both emotionally and practically, all I could do was sit there and shake my head at the pure resonance of it (and give a small nod of approval to the clever way Eva Dolan had manipulated my head)

Look this is classically good writing right? There are a plethora of brilliant crime and thriller writers around, using language in many different ways to entertain us, but there a few, those very few that just have that depth of emotion, that literary twist to the way they do things, that thing in their storytelling that tells you they were born to do this – and this author is one of those. She’s been showing us for a while now, but with this novel, undoubtedly for this reader her best so far, she’s hit that sweet spot that starts defining a writing career.

Exquisitely understated prose that digs deep, two characters that you will live with, an utterly utterly riveting story with a final denouement that will leave you stunned, This Is How It Ends heads straight onto my favourites of all time list. No messing. Sometimes that’s just the way it is.

Read this. This is what it’s all about. Eva Dolan is the real deal.

Highly Recommended.

I love Eva Dolan's Zigic & Ferreira series but this standalone has a slightly different feel about it. Its revolving first-person narratives of clashing stories give the book more of an air of a psychological thriller rather than a police procedural, and it feels more conventional than her earlier edgy stories.

Set within a community of anti-gentrification activists, there's again a politicised angle, but one which isn't as dark as previous books. With various twists which bring together pasts and present, questions of identity, lies and betrayal, this keeps the pages turning. All the same, I hope Dolan hasn't abandoned Zigic and Ferreira completely.