Chance: A Novel

The “disturbing and provocative” (Los Angeles Times) novel about a forensic neuropsychiatrist at the end of his rope—now a Hulu series starring Hugh Laurie and Diane Farr—from award-winning author Kem Nunn.

Chance is a dark story about psychiatric mystery, sexual obsession, fractured identities, and terrifyingly realistic violence—a tale told amid the back streets of California’s Bay Area, far from the cleansing breezes of the ocean. This is California noir, this is Kem Nunn country. It’s not pretty, it’s not sweet, but it is compelling and unforgettable.

The antihero of this book, Dr. Eldon Chance, a neuropsychiatrist, is a man primed for spectacular ruin. Into Dr. Chance’s blighted life walks Jaclyn Blackstone, the abused, attractive wife of an Oakland homicide detective, a violent and jealous man. Jaclyn appears to be suffering from a dissociative identity disorder. In time, Chance will fall into bed with her—or is it with her alter ego, the voracious and volatile Jackie Black? The not-so-good doctor, despite his professional training, isn’t quite sure and soon finds himself up against her husband, Raymond, a formidable and dangerous adversary.

Meanwhile, Chance also meets a young man named D, a self-styled, streetwise philosopher skilled in the art of the blade. It is around this trio of unique and dangerous individuals that long-guarded secrets begin to unravel, obsessions grow, and the doctor’s carefully arranged life comes to the brink of implosion. “Taking place in the twilit world of noir, where people and things are never what they seem” (The New York Times Book Review), Chance is a twisted, harrowing, and impossible-to-put-down head trip through the fun house of fate…mesmerizing until the very last page.