“Mom,” she said and smiled. It was all still true. She was too young. She’d never even been an aunt or a babysitter. But sometimes you’re given a mission and sometimes you’re good at that mission.
She rolled her sweatpants to her knees and stepped into the opaque water.
It was cold.
Very cold.
The beach was kind of eerie.
She was alone here in the dark, but really, there was nothing to be afraid of. She could look after herself and her family. And this was her place. Her home.
A breeze rippled the stillness.
She hugged herself and found that she was crying.
Tears pouring down her cheeks into the crescent moon reflected on Puget Sound.
She looked east toward the rest of the continent.
It was well before sunrise.
But all you had to do was wait.
Patience was a weapon.
If you waited long enough, the dawn would come.
Acknowledgments
I should say at the outset here that although Dutch Island is a real place （with a different name） the people who live there are unlike the inhabitants in The Island. The geography has not been fictionalized very much but the island’s residents have. I lived in Melbourne from 2008 to 2019 and I can assure you that Victoria is the friendliest state in Australia.
This book could not have been written without the help of my agent and buddy Shane Salerno. On the phone one day Shane and I were arguing about movies as per usual and I was recounting a Deliverance moment I once had in real life: While I was driving in rural Australia on a very isolated island inhabited by one large extended family, a woman wearing a hearing aid pulled out of a blind road on her bicycle and I swerved to miss her. I half jokingly told my wife, Leah, that if—God forbid—we had hit her we wouldn’t have gotten off that island alive. When I told Shane this story, he said, “No, you did hit her; that’s your next book.” Shane shepherded this novel through several drafts, during Covid lockdown, when the last thing I wanted to do was write. If you’re lucky enough to have Shane Salerno in your corner you’re fortunate indeed.
At Little, Brown I want to thank Michael Pietsch and Bruce Nichols, who are great champions for their authors and lovely people. Little, Brown has always put a premium on art and artists and the whole team there has been nothing but a fount of encouragement. Craig Young in particular has been a friend and protector right from the beginning and also a force of nature, captaining the ship through the storm when I’m sure I wasn’t the only author who was having trouble dealing with the pandemic. I want to thank my editor, Helen O’Hare, for all her brilliant suggestions, humor, and astute comments. I also want to praise my wonderful copyeditor, Tracy Roe, with whom I dueled and dialogued in the margins of The Island.
I need to thank my entire family in Ireland for being such cheerleaders of my writing, particularly my mum, Jean McKinty; my sisters and brothers, Diane, Lorna, Rod, and Gareth; my auntie, Catherine, and all my wee nephews and nieces over there.
I’ve been fortunate to make a lot of mates in the crime fiction and broader writing community and I want to pay tribute to Don Winslow, Steve Hamilton, Steve Cavanagh, Diana Gabaldon, Stu Neville, Daniel Woodrell, Brian McGilloway, Liz Nugent, Gerard Brennan, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Abir Mukherjee, Jason Steger, and many others whom space constraints preclude but who know I love them.
Huge thanks to Jeff Glor and the entire team at CBS News for making me look good on national television （skillful editing and special effects must have been employed there）。 Thank you too to all my American friends and family and particularly my mother-in-law, Susan Vladeck.
I want to say a quick thank you to Salman Rushdie and James Ellroy, whom I interviewed just before the Covid crisis and to whom I cheekily pitched the idea for The Island to get their take. Both of them came up with ideas that made it into the book.
This novel was written in lockdown with my family in a tiny New York City apartment. My two rescue cats, Miffy and Jet, should get a mention because they were there with me at three a.m., when everyone else was asleep. I want to thank my amazing daughters, Arwynn and Sophie, for making me smile, giving the best hugs, and keeping me sane. Finally I want to thank my beautiful wife, Leah, for being part of this sanity anchor thing, as well as for all the years of love and encouragement and for laughing at my—admittedly hilarious—jokes.