The Crime of Julian Wells

“Thomas Cook never disappoints.” —Michael Connelly

“Thomas Cook’s work is elegant, philosophical, and literary . . . Grade A.” —The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)


With The Crime of Julian Wells, Thomas H. Cook, one of America’s most acclaimed suspense writers, has written a twisty, cerebral thriller that is a mystery of identity, or assumed identity, and a journey into the maze of a mysterious life we only thought we knew.

When famed true-crime writer Julian Wells’s body is found in a boat drifting on a Montauk pond, the question is not how he died, but why? The death appears to be an obvious suicide. But why would Julian Wells have taken his own life? And was this his only crime? These are the questions that first intrigue and then obsess Philip Anders, Wells’s best friend and the chief defender of both his moral and his literary legacies.

Anders’s first clue is an Argentinean crime, which he believes was the great writer’s last book idea. As Anders gathers the missing parts of Wells’s life, the journey grows more and more dangerous and complex. Soon the man Anders thought he knew becomes shrouded in mystery, and the ever-deepening puzzle threatens to consume him entirely.

The Crime of Julian Wells pans over four decades and across three continents. Through this richly plotted and brilliantly told story, Cook’s lyrical prose is a voyage into the depth and darkness of a man’s heart.