Kate Quinn's novel The Briar Club opens with a murder on Thanksgiving Day, 1954. Police are on the scene at Briarwood House, a boarding house for women, where a body has been found. The residents and other guests invited for the holiday, suspects in the crime, wait while detectives try to piece together what, exactly, has happened. The narrative then jumps back to 1950 and moves forward from there, highlighting each of the house's residents and dropping clues as to what has led to the shocking act of violence depicted in the prologue.

Most of the narrative concerns past events (those occurring from 1950 up until the murder), and each chapter is relayed from the viewpoint of a specific character. Quinn uses this technique masterfully, introducing readers to each of the women from the outside — as the rest of the household sees them — but then using that character's own...