“[Winslow is] brilliant at portraying the ragged fragments of these lives. What emerges isn’t a single killer with motive and means, but a tangle of stories crossing and colliding, stray intersections of incidents and accidents, misunderstandings, and misreadings, all thanks to the myopia of individual perspectives and the self-centeredness of individual desires.” –Washington Post
“Interesting, evocative fiction.”
–Kirkus Reviews
“Masterful . . . Emily Winslow effortlessly weaves together separate lives with intertwined lies, creating a powerful web of small deceits and horrifying misdeeds. THE START OF EVERYTHING is a must read!”
–Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Winslow’s writing is uniquely perceptive and penetrating. She is a precise and expert analyst of the darkest parts of the human psyche.”
–Sophie Hannah, bestselling author of Kind of Cruel
“Marvelous . . . Every word flows smoothly and pulses with meaning. This is literary suspense at its finest.”
–Carla Buckley, author of Invisible
The Start of Everything opens with the body of a teenage girl found floating in flood waters near Cambridge, England. Detective Inspector Chloe Frohmann and her partner, Morris Keene, must work quickly to identify the victim before the press takes off with the salacious story. Across the hallowed paths and storied squares of Cambridge 
University, the detectives follow scant clues toward the identity of the dead girl. Eventually, their search leads them to Deeping House, an imposing country manor where, over the course of one Christmas holiday, three families, two nannies, and one young writer were snowed in together. Detective Frohmann begins to unravel a tangled web of passions and secrets, of long-buried crimes and freshly committed horrors. But in order to reveal the truth-about misaddressed letters, a devastating affair, and a murdered teenager-she may have to betray her partner.
About the Author
Emily Winslow lives in Cambridge, the 800-year-old University town that inspired her first novel, The Whole World. She originally trained as an actress at Carnegie Mellon University’s elite conservatory, researched the display of Egyptian artifacts in graduate school, and for years designed puzzles for a national magazine. All of those experiences, inhabiting roles, curating curiosities, and designing tricky, satisfying puzzles, shine through in her books.