The Blue Hour

The Blue Hour (2024) is a psychological thriller by British novelist Paula Hawkins. The novel follows Hawkins’s well-known thrillers, including The Girl on the Train (2015) and A Slow Fire Burning (2021). In The Blue Hour, the Fairburn Foundation has received the artistic estate of the late Vanessa Chapman, a well-known British contemporary artist. After a viewer claims that one of the artist’s sculptures contains a fragment of human bone, an investigation into a string of deaths and who is responsible unfolds. Hawkins’s novel explores themes of The Subjective Nature of Truth and Memory, Public Persona Versus Personal Identity, and The Dangers of Ambition through a complex mystery set partially on a remote island in Scotland.

This guide refers to the 2024 Penguin Random House UK edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, death, illness, suicidal ideation, addiction, rape, and cursing.

Plot Summary

The primary plot takes place in 2021. James Becker is a curator and creative director at the Fairburn Foundation, a charitable trust headquartered at the Fairburn Estate in the Scottish Borders region. Becker obtained this position because he is close friends with Sebastian Lennox, the current head of the foundation. Becker is married to Helena, who was previously engaged to Sebastian. Becker, Helena, and Sebastian live on the estate, along with Emmeline Lennox, Sebastian’s mother. Douglas Lennox, Sebastian’s father, died in a hunting accident in 2019; while the official story is that an employee accidentally shot him, Emmeline killed him.

The Fairburn Foundation received a significant bequest in 2017: noted British artist Vanessa Chapman left her entire artistic estate to the foundation when she died from cancer. This bequest was surprising because Vanessa and Douglas had a tumultuous relationship. Douglas owned the gallery where Vanessa exhibited (and the two of them were once lovers), but in 2002, she abruptly and mysteriously canceled a major exhibition; this led to a legal battle and years of enmity. No one understands why Vanessa chose to leave her art to Douglas’s foundation.

At the start of the plot, years after Vanessa’s death, her executor and close friend, Grace Haswell, is reluctant to turn over additional papers and documents. She may even be hiding additional artworks. Grace lives alone on the island of Eris, an isolated tidal island in Scotland, where Vanessa lived and worked until her death in 2016. Vanessa and Grace met in 1998 when Grace, a doctor, worked at a nearby hospital; the two women became close friends.

In the narrative present, one of Vanessa’s sculptures is on display when a viewer claims that a bone used in the sculpture (described by Vanessa as a deer bone) is human. An investigation begins; the possibility of human bone being present in Vanessa’s work is particularly concerning because in the summer of 2002, Vanessa’s husband, Julian Chapman, vanished. Vanessa and Julian were separated at this time; she had moved to Eris alone in the late 1990s. Julian went to visit Vanessa on Eris and spent several days before Vanessa departed for a work trip. Julian vanished in the period during which Vanessa was absent from the island.

The mystery surrounding the bone prompts Becker to make repeated trips to Eris, questioning Grace and trying to understand more about Vanessa’s life and creative process. Becker’s passion for Vanessa’s art touches Grace, and she gradually reveals more about Vanessa’s history, both by sharing Vanessa’s papers (including letters and diary entries) and through her own reminiscing. However, Grace is frequently not honest with Becker. Her friendship with Vanessa was fraught, and Grace was obsessive and jealous.

The novel gradually reveals that Grace has been responsible for the deaths of three people, including Julian. She administered a fatal drug overdose to Vanessa when she was in the final stages of cancer, an act that may or may not have been consensual. In 2002, Grace killed Julian after a jealous confrontation and then hid his body in the septic tank under the cottage where Vanessa lived. At this time, Grace also destroyed many of Vanessa’s artworks, although she led Vanessa to believe that Julian was responsible; this destruction was what forced Vanessa to abruptly cancel her exhibition.

Details about Grace’s past also reveal that she killed a former friend, a man named Nick Riley on the island of Eris in 1993 (before Vanessa moved there). Grace killed Nick in rage after he taunted her and buried his body in the woods. Years later, Vanessa found one of Nick’s bones by chance, mistook it for an animal bone, and used it in her sculpture. Grace’s role in these crimes gradually becomes apparent to Becker, and Grace traps him on the island so that he cannot report her. The conclusion implies that Becker drowns after Grace drugs him with morphine.