One of Us

Day revisits characters from her 2017 novel The Party in this scorching drama of class, family, and politics. At the center are boyhood friends Martin Gilmour and Ben Fitzmaurice, who share a fateful secret. As students at Cambridge University, Martin took the blame for Ben’s drunk driving incident that claimed a classmate’s life. Motivated partly by his romantic obsession with Ben, Martin also accepted hush money from Ben’s aristocratic family. Now in his late 40s, Martin remains tormented by guilt, while Ben, Britain’s energy secretary, considers a run for prime minister, prompting his haughty family to scrub any mention of Martin from their history. Their explosive reunion occurs when Ben’s jilted wife, Serena, invites Martin to the funeral for Ben’s sister, whose potentially scandalous death by suicide he barely manages to cover up. Day effectively plays on the suspicion and long-buried resentment between Ben and the people in his life, including Serena, his angry teen daughter, and Martin, all of whom would enjoy seeing him taken down a peg. The result is a satisfying tale of revenge and redemption and the messy means to achieve them.Agent: Meredith Miller, UTA. (Feb.)