Vigil Annie

From the author of Marion comes a new popcorn thriller with a ripped-from-the-headlines twist that asks: how far would you go to prove your innocence, if the world already thought you were a murderer?

Annie Giudici doesn’t want to be famous. She’s content to leave the news cycle to the high-powered clients she works with at her crisis PR firm. Her own life, particularly after her brother’s tragic death, is dramatic enough as it is.

But on the way to work one morning, she sees herself on the cover of the New York Post. Or rather, a woman with an uncanny resemblance to her—who is wanted for murdering a tech executive, right outside Annie’s office. It’s not long before the suspect is caught, and Annie breathes a sigh of relief, while her coworkers tease her about her short-lived, accidental notoriety.

That is, until a city-wide alert announces that the NYPD nabbed the wrong woman. The killer is still at large, and all eyes in the office turn to Annie.

In a panic, she ditches work and decides to lay low for a few days—until things calm down, and the real murderer is apprehended. Yet more details begin to emerge, and the news quickly goes from bad to worse: the murder victim worked for Singulist, the company that Annie has publicly blamed for her brother’s AI-induced psychosis—and a client of her PR firm. Suddenly, she has not just the resemblance to the killer, but also the access—and a motive.

Within hours, Annie is publicly named as a suspect, and with eight million New Yorkers now looking for her, she is officially on the run. An elaborate game of cat and mouse ensues, leading her from the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan to the dune-swept beaches of East Hampton. But as the bodies pile up, Annie realizes that nothing about these killings is what it seems—and the very people she thought she could trust might be setting her up. Can Annie find the truth, clear her name, and take down her doppelganger—or is she destined to rot for a murder she didn’t commit?