'If you were to ask me to tell you about my wife, I would have to warn you at the outset that I don't know a great deal about her. Or at least, not as much as I thought I did...'

Alex is a solitary London lawyer who is deeply in love with his beautiful wife, Rachel. When Rachel is brutally murdered one Midsummer Night in Oxford, all of his happiness vanishes. Shrouded in shock and grief, he returns to Oxford that winter and begins to try to piece together the mystery surrounding Rachel's death, discovering in her wake a tangled web of sex and jealousy, of would-be lovers and spiteful friends, of blackmail, and of revenge.

Part love story, part murder-mystery, and with shades of Donna Tartt's The Secret History, Kazuo Ishiguro, this is an extraordinary literary thriller guaranteed to make your heart beat faster and faster...

About the Author
Elanor Dymott was born in Chingola, Zambia, in 1973. She was educated in the USA and England and spent parts of her childhood in South East Asia, where she later worked. Her first novel, Every Contact Leaves a Trace, was published in 2012. She lives in London.

Reviews
A startlingly original blend of mystery, love story and emotional journey...not be missed * Stylist *
An exquisite, creepy and unexpectedly sexy murder mystery...with the tension of a Nicci French thriller, the intellectual fizz of Donna Tatt's The Secret History and the very best of Maggie O'Farrell's unnerving readability, Dymott is a classy storyteller... Read this novel now before everyone else starts talking about it * Elle *
A powerful meditation on grief, love and the nature of uncertainty * Sunday Times *
Elegant and eerie * Marie Claire *
Intriguing * Woman & Home *
A compelling mystery... I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an intelligent page turner * Farm Lane Books *
In addition to creating a cleverly calibrated and creepy murder mystery, Dymott has also fashioned a neatly tailored exploration of the desperate psychology of loss... This is a cunning, sharp first novel that revels in keeping one in the dark * Independent on Sunday *
Wholly absorbing * Evening Standard *
Wonderfully unique * The Times *
It's rare to feel so completely inside someone's head * Psychologies *
Elanor Dymott's arresting debut...combines the pleasures of a thriller with an elegiac meditation on the trials of youth * The Lady *
A dark clever campus novel that draws the reader into a skilfully woven web of half-told stories... Crafted and elegantly written * Metro *
Dymott's capacity to conjure striking imagery is exceptional. This is more than a murder mystery. It's an examination of the subjectivity of accounts of truth. It's a desperately moving love story about a lonely man who finds salvation in another only to have his idyll destroyed. It's a tale of revenge, served cold and deadly * Independent *
This is a love story, told in reverse, a haunting tale of youth and lost love, and a poetical thriller.A powerful debut and a distinctive voice -- Tom Hollander
Elanor Dymott's gorgeous debut novel is a murder mystery that's also a brilliant meditation on love and memory and loss. Like the Robert Browning poems her characters read at Oxford, the book is spooky, lovesick, dark, and lush, its narrator circling obsessively back on the death at its heart -- Maile Meloy
An irresistible blast of an opening which never disappoints in a journey into a complex knot of intense and ultimately destructive relationships from which the murder that is the dark core ofThis excellent debut novel distills -- Jon Snow
A beautiful, lucid nightmare of a book. A mystery of love and murder that is elegantly written, disturbing, always compelling, and lingers long in the mind -- Adam Foulds

A literary thriller wrapped up in a whodunit love story, Elanor Dymott's debut makes for compulsive reading. The complexity of the plot put me in mind of The Secret History;
it deserves to reach just as wide an audience

-- John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Every Contact Leaves a Trace is beautifully paced, from the graphic event at its start through all its shifting possibilities to its strange, logical conclusion. It is a marvelous book -- Bernard O'Donoghue



Book Information
ISBN 9780099563594
Author Elanor Dymott
Format Paperback
Page Count 384
Imprint Vintage
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 264g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 23mm