Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: What Happened Next: A Novel by Edwin Hill

  

Edwin Hill’s sixth book is an action-filled thriller with strong similarities to No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay. As in Barclay’s book, What Happened Next (Thomas & Mercer, 2026) tells the story of a young adult who looks back to a crime that affected him as a child and tries to make sense of it through the lens of time and adult perspective. Charlie Kilgore was a baby when his father stabbed a man to death, turned on Charlie’s mother, injuring her severely, and then came after his two sons. Reid, the older, had the presence of mind to take Charlie into a boat and push it out into the lake, away from their enraged father. Their father disappeared into the mountains and was believed to have died. At least this is what Charlie has always been told.

Now in his early 20s Charlie would like to know more about the attack. His brash young supervisor at the radio station where he works is pushing him to collect enough personal interviews of participants to create a series of podcasts, convinced it would be a major career move for both of them. And in the back of his mind, Charlie is not convinced his father is dead. He thinks he’s seen his father here and there over the course of his school years but never said anything, understanding he would not be believed.

The podcasts are uppermost in Charlie’s mind when he returns to his family’s summer home in New Hampshire on Memorial Day weekend. His mother, aunt, and brother actively discourage his interest in re-opening barely closed wounds. No one else who was around at the time wants to be reminded of the tragedy but he records the interviews he can while spending time with Seton, his long-time friend and daughter of the murdered man.

His plans for the podcast go sideways when a house owned by his family’s construction firm is burned by arsonists, his mother’s body is found a short time later, and a stalker that a former television actor had come to the village to avoid re-appears. The arson and murder investigations set off more incidents, some of them violent. Charlie is sure that most, if not all, of the events are linked to the long-ago murder and attempted murder attributed to his father and he continues to ask questions.

An intense, engaging, and fast-paced story full of surprises to the very end. Starred review from Publishers Weekly.

 

·         Publisher: ‎Thomas & Mercer

·         Publication date: ‎April 1, 2026

·         Language: English

·         Print length: ‎317 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1662536852

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1662536854

 

  

Amazon Associate Purchase Link:  https://amzn.to/4bWYMj9

 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2026 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.