This Is How It Ends

This is how it begins: a rooftop party in London celebrates the resolve of tenacious tenants to remain in their poky building despite the threats of overreaching property developers to force them out. Ella Riordan is the poster face of protest, attractive, as well as the daughter of a high-ranking police official. Before it is over, she ends up with a dead body on her hands and seeks the help of her friend and longtime protester Molly Fader to help her dispose of the corpse down the elevator shaft. The remainder of the story follows Molly from the party onward, while Ella's story unspools backward from the party to the events leading up to it. The emphasis is not so much on the identity of the body as on the meaning of different types of solidarity: the bonds uniting protesters, the relationships among women, the power of the thin blue line, and the links between reporters and their sources. This is a telling snapshot of a London recognizable today from Occupy London protests and absentee oligarchical landlords to such tragedies as the Grenfell Tower fire.