The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed...

After searching for her sister for two years, Kate Gallagher is devastated when she's called to the morgue to identify Chrissy's body. Guilt and grief compel Kate to find her sister's killer, even if it means following a lethal bounty hunter into danger. Maximum Security's Jason Maddox has never worked for a client he's so drawn to, or for a case so monstrous. As clues lead the pair deeper into the city's underbelly, connections to human trafficking...