A wicked battle of wits between an 81-year-old lady and an 8-year-old boy.
The long-term residents of the Royal Karnak Palace Hotel in Luxor are languishing in the blistering Egyptian heat at the end of the Covid pandemic. A barely concealed and escalating battle of tit-for-tat has erupted between those two guests.
This was my second Egypt book in a row (Nephthys by R M Driscoll the other) with the atmosphere caught brilliantly well. However, this faded grandeur story is dripping with malevolence, with allegiances forged and broken, with memories true and imagined. Fabulously dark.

This darkly atmospheric psychological suspense novel takes readers to the faded luxury of the Royal Karnak Hotel on the banks of the Nile. At its heart is 81-year-old widow Maggie Burkhardt, a compulsive meddler whose well-intentioned interference in others’ lives often veers into chaos. Maggie has left a trail of trouble behind her, most recently at a Swiss hotel where her actions made a quick departure a necessity. Now, she’s settled at the Royal Karnak, seeking solace, companionship, and perhaps a second chance at a peaceful existence.

Maggie is far from your typical sweet old lady. Although her charming façade wins over staff and fellow long-term guests, she is an unreliable narrator with questionable motives. Her grief for her late husband, Peter, is palpable, but her intrusive tendencies suggest she might be driven by more than just loneliness.

Her latest target is Tess, a young, troubled mother, and her mischievous eight-year-old son, Otto, who have recently arrived at the hotel. Initially, Maggie’s intentions seem benign as she welcomes the pair into her world, offering advice and support. But Otto quickly proves to be more than Maggie can handle. In this wiry, sharp-tongued child, Maggie may have finally met her match.

What follows is a battle of wits and wills between the octogenarian and the precocious boy. The novel twists and turns as Maggie’s fixation on Tess and Otto spirals out of control, with the lines between victim and villain becoming increasingly blurred. The tension builds to a shocking climax, leaving readers questioning just how far Maggie—or Otto—will go to protect their agendas.

This is a deliciously twisted story, perfect for fans of unreliable narrators and morally ambiguous characters. With its sharp prose and unsettling atmosphere, it masterfully explores themes of grief, loneliness, and the dangerous allure of control. The clash between age and youth has never been so vicious—or so compelling.

If you enjoy suspenseful, character-driven tales with a dark edge, this novel is a must-read. It’s a wild, unforgettable ride that will leave you questioning who the real villain truly is.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.

Nosy and interfering Maggie Burkhardt has a nasty habit of getting involved in other people's business. A habit that caused her to have to flee a stay in the Alps and relocate to the Royal Karnak Hotel in Luxor, Egypt. But it appears she hasn't learnt her lesson and this time she seems to have met her match in eight year old Otto.

I went into this book not knowing much and what I found was a very strange, White Lotus-esque set up with a grand but crumbling hotel filled with demanding guests and the put upon staff forced to provide service to them.

It was, quite frankly, a pretty insane and wild ride of a read and one that unfortunately I didn't enjoy as much as I hoped I would. There's a trend it feels at the moment to pack your cast with wholly unlikeable characters and that's what I found here. It's a trope I don't love as whilst I don't mind bad behaviour, I struggle to enjoy a read when I dislike the main character(s) as much as I did here.

If that's something that you enjoy and you like strange and twisting thrillers then I would recommend this to you because whilst it didn't hit the mark for me I think it's more to do with my reading tastes than anything related to the writing for this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction | The Borough Press for this digital review copy of "HAVOC" in exchange for my honest and voluntary review.

Maggie Burkhardt, 81, formerly of Winconsin, is living at the Royal Karnak Hotel in Luxor, Egypt, after losing her husband and daughter. She spends her days avoiding the sun, chatting with other long-term residents and the hotel manager, and 'fixing' the lives of unhappy hotel guests. However, Maggie is not the kindly old woman that people perceive. It takes 8-year-old Otto to pierce her façade. And Otto is no innocent child himself — a nastier little shit would be hard to find. The two end up in a bitter fight for survival where there are no limits to what they will do to outwit and bring down the other. Even if it comes to murder. As the heat rises, Maggie and Otto spiral and havoc ensues.

It's all very White Lotus-y, with the exotic hotel setting, feckless rich people idling away their time, demanding entitled guests and put-upon staff.

Wicked and delicious and nauseating.

Havoc is my first novel by Christopher Bollen and I'm delighted to discover this author. He reminds me of Lionel Shriver (an author I loved before finding out more about her political views. Ugh. Won't be buying her books anymore...), for his incisive satire and wit. Now I'll just buy his books instead.

Thanks to the publisher, @harpercollins.bsky.social, author and Netgalley for the ARC. All my reviews are 100% honest and unbiased, regardless of how I acquire the book.

Christopher Bollen's Havoc is narrated by Maggie, an elderly widow from the United States who has become a long-stay guest at a grand if ageing hotel in Luxor during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Reminiscing about her perfect life with her late husband Peter, Maggie believes it is her mission to fix other people’s unhappy relationships – even if that means planting evidence of fictional affairs – and alludes to the trouble this has led her into in the past. And despite her glowing memories of daughter Julia, something bad clearly went down between the two of them. When smart eight-year-old Otto arrives at the hotel with his mother, however, Maggie realises her reign of manipulation might be coming to an end. This is the first Bollen I've read, so I wasn't sure what to expect. He's clearly an incredibly skilled writer, able to evoke the heat of the overgrown hotel gardens and the Valley of the Kings, draw clever pen-portraits of the other hotel guests, and immerse us in Maggie’s unreliable narration. The fact that I could only manage about a chapter at a time while reading the first half of the novel is testament to his talent. Somehow, I was so invested in Maggie, even though she starts off weird and unpleasant and gets worse, and I desperately wanted her schemes to come off. Bollen really ratchets up the tension in small social interactions, and I felt like I wanted to read this through my fingers. In contrast, I read the last 40% practically in one sitting - as Maggie's plots become crimes, I found it easier to distance myself a bit and enjoy the way the plot unfolds, satisfyingly pulling together what may have seemed like extraneous details in the earlier chapters. A superior literary psychodrama, and my only serious criticism would be that the ending is too quick - I'd like to have had a glimpse at the aftermath, perhaps from another character's point of view, and definitely SPOILER some comeuppance for Otto.

I genuinely could not put this book down. I had to stay up til half one in the morning because I had to know what happened!

I read an eARC of this book on NetGalley so thank you to the author and the publisher.

This book follows Maggie. Maggie is 81 years old and has been living for a while at a hotel in Egypt after leaving Switzerland in unfortunate circumstances. Maggie likes to meddle. She likes to fix people’s lives. But she meets her match in eight year old Otto who spies her meddling and starts making demands. A feud escalates growing more and more sinister and intense between these two disturbing individuals.

This book was so tense and stressful! An absolute page turner. I was completely obsessed. I couldn’t believe how unhinged this got as it escalated and the things they did to each other. I was so terrified as to what would happen but I couldn’t stop reading.

The writing was so brilliant and intense. It was such a clever idea to have a battle between an eight and an eighty one year old. Everyone else around them underestimates them and that allows them to enact absolute carnage.

I was really impressed with this book, it was so well-written, so fascinating.

A pair of decidedly unlikeable characters - a precocious 8 year old and the narrator, an interfering dodgy 81 year old - play a cat and mouse game in a faded luxury Luxor Hotel in this unique but disturbing thriller.
Shades of White Lotus - exotic location, hotel guests behaving badly - but taken to some strange extremes..
I don't mind people behaving badly but always find it hard to engage when I dislike (and distrust) the main character this much.

DNF 52% Apologies, but I cannot continue torturing myself with this boring stuff. Let mi start with the COVID – please stop put it in books for no good reason, we lived through it, we don’t need to read about it, it dates the book and it doesn’t say anything we didn’t know already. The main character was so annoying and uncharismatic, sticking her nose in other people’s business, being the savior. I get there was an intention to expose her at the end but I cannot justify the dull and trivial interactions she had. There was nothing remotely intelligent in her methods so far and I highly disliked her. The kid was more entertaining, but still, big disappointment with this one. I’m giving it 2 stars now, because the premise is interesting and the setting at the hotel was atmospheric, although I would never go to a vacation in the desert.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the ARC.

I started reading HAVOC with knowing very little about what it entailed. This made my reading experience a lot more enjoyable as I had no idea what was coming next and could not predict what was going to happen. It was thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish and would highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a fun thriller.

Maggie is an elderly American lady who, after losing her husband has decamped to a series of hotels. After a sojourn in Switzerland, she has now ended up in Egypt, in a hotel in Luxor. She likes the staff and the other guests, the comfort of the new routines. This is set just after the first lockdown, when travel is happening but things are not yet back to normal. Or what passes for normal in Maggie's life, because, well, she has secrets... She may look elderly and innocent, but she likes to interfere and sometimes that interfering in other peoples lives has consequences.

When a mother arrives at the hotel, with her young son, Maggie senses that all is not what it should be. She is at her best when she has people with problems around her and can arrange their lives. As well as the elderly appearing to be unthreatening, children also have that appearance. Young Otto though may well be more than able to both deter Maggie's machinations and, in fact, surpass them.

I really enjoyed 'Orient' by Christopher Bollen and was pleased to read his latest worl. This is a dark read, a cat and mouse attempt by two people who are often ignored by society - the elderly and the young - to outwit and outmaneuver each other. On the one side, there is Maggie, who is desperate to maintain her new life and on the other there is Otto, who is very much her equal at manipulation. This is a great read I recommend both the author and the novel highly.

Absolutely brilliant and insane. I went in knowing very little about the book and I’m glad because it made it even more of a wild ride. The building of tension as the protagonist unravels was excellent and the finale did not disappoint!

Thank you to Harper Collins and NetGalley for the ARC!

"HAVOC" by Christopher Bollen relies on the untrustworthy narrator of an 80+ year old widow who spent several years hopping from one luxury hotel to another seemingly as a way to cope with her grief. Having a habit to interfere with other people's lives, Maggie encounters her antagonist in a character of an 8 year old child, who - filtered through Maggie's narrative - presents as an individual with sociopathic tendencies.

As the action progresses, it becomes clearer and clearer that the protagonist is becoming more disturbed, paranoid and unstable. But it also becomes apparent that it's not just the feud with the young boy that's causing it, as the reason for Maggie's mental state lies in the past that's catching up with her.

However, this novel needs some serious trigger warnings as some motives may be disturbing for some readers: sexual assault on a minor; parent with mental health issues; [implied] animal cruelty.

Eighty-one-year-old Maggie Burkhardt has left it all behind. After the death of her husband and the tragic loss of her daughter Julia, she fled her native Wisconsin and has spent the last five years ping-ponging between the world’s luxury hotels. Now she has finally come to rest somewhere she can imagine staying forever: the Royal Karnak Hotel in Luxor.

I loved this book from the first page. It is so wonderfully written. The descriptions, it only of places but of situations and thoughts are fabulous. The conflict between the old and the young in this cat and mouse tussle is brilliant. It’s a hard to put down novel and has a great twist at the end.

What a bizarre book. I enjoyed reading it for the most part, the concept of an elderly lady feuding with an 8 year old boy was a strange enough concept that I was intrigued to read. It’s darkly hilarious in parts, but also poignant and sad in others. I read it over the course of an afternoon and found I couldn’t put it down as I had absolutely no idea where it was going. A good read.

This is a strange book and I'm not sure that it entirely worked for me but it was certainly different. It is told from the point of view of an unreliable narrator, Maggie an 81 year old woman who has a hobby of staying at lovely hotels and then intefering int he lives of guests whom she perceives to be unhappy. During the pandemic she is holed up in a hotel in Egypt ,as is 8 year old Otto ( and his mother) who is wise beyond his years and clocks what Maggie is up to and so begins a battle of wits and a darkly comic tale.

Buckle up, you're in for a wild ride. I had an absolute blast reading this. Otto and Maggie are wild characters and their behavior is shocking lol! If you're looking for an Egypt-based, pandemic-themed riot, then be sure to check out Havoc.

4/5 stars

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the ARC!

Havoc is a novel about two people locked in a battle to beat each other, whilst staying in a hotel in Egypt. Maggie is eighty-one and hiding out in Egypt following a situation at her previous hotel in Switzerland, thanks to her habit to interfering with strangers' personal lives when she believes their relationships to be unhappy. When an eight-year-old boy, Otto, arrives at the hotel Maggie is staying at with his mother, she immediately wants to befriend them, but that quickly sours when it turns out Otto has worked out what she does, and soon they're caught in an escalating battle, starting to impact others at the hotel as well.

This is a darkly comic book told from Maggie's perspective, and as might be apparent from the summary, you can't always trust what she says. The concept is really around these two duplicitous characters, both unlikely for this kind of genre, trying to beat the other in increasingly dark ways, but with an undercurrent of exploring Maggie's past and what has led her to this point. It is a fun book, with some notable twisty moments, and the setting is focused on travellers staying in Egypt, occasionally poking fun at them and their lack of knowledge about the locals and the place they're in. The ending is quite sudden, really relying on a final twist, but it did feel like the rest of the book paved the way for it.

Havoc often feels like a film and though the blurb I read compared it to The Talented Mr Ripley, I would also draw a comparison with Bullet Train, as the plot really plays with expectations of children and older people and what they can do. It's an enjoyable book, good for when you want something that plays out like a darkly comic thriller without too much thinking needed.

3.5 stars.
Maggie, who is an overbearing and compulsive person in her 80s meets her 8-year-old match, Otto.
They are both unlikeable and devious, and their feud is engaging and entertaining. Well, until it is isn’t. Some dark, questionable instances and the ending stained my enjoyment.
It is dark and well-written, but a tad too dark for my taste. I would like to see this as a film, and enjoy my slight discomfort.