Alisia Berenson’s life seems perfect. The famous artist married a sought-after fashionable photographer. She lives in one of London’s most attractive and expensive neighborhoods, in a luxurious house with large windows overlooking the park. One late evening, when her husband Gabriel returns home from yet another shoot, Alisia shoots him in the face five times. And ever since, she has said nothing.
Alisia’s refusal to speak or offer any explanation stirs the public imagination. The secret makes the artist famous. And while she herself is under forced treatment, the price of her last work—an self-portrait with a single inscription in Greek, “ALCESTIS”—is rapidly rising.
Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist. He has been waiting for the chance to work with Alisia, to make her talk. But what lies behind his obsession with a deranged man-killer—and where will all these psychological experiments lead? Perhaps to the truth that will swallow him too…