Bother, it’s Greg again. It’s gotten to the point where I hear his ring tone and I shudder. He’s always calling me – and his calls always interrupt me when I’m deep into painting.
I’m not being fair. I know it. Greg’s a great guy. Good looking enough. Generous, and he seems to really adore me. Plus, he’s a doctor. He’s got enough money to treat me to dinner. Sushi, even, which is more than I can say about my own broke crew. Painters, sculptors, printmakers… none of us have two nickels to rub together, all crowded together in a building that stinks of turpentine and who knows what else? Carbon tet and other poisons, probably. We’re none of us careful. A community built on scraps, salvaging throwaways – garbage, really – to use in our desperate attempts to create. Some of us are even doing it, although none of us is getting rich. More important, none of my crew is treating me to dinner. None of my colleagues are interested in a failed – well, flailing – artist up to her neck in debt.
Greg is a prize, and I don’t need my mother nagging me to know it. But why does he have to call so often? He knows I’ll come over tonight, just as soon as I’m done here. Done? Ha. I should’ve trashed this piece ages ago. I would’ve, if I could afford new canvases. I’m just spinning my wheels here, painting over and over what I’ve done before. Trying to re-create that one piece. The one painting that wasn’t simply “pretty.” That showed I’ve got more than “a good sense of color,” or whatever it was that teacher said, years ago. Trying to capture something real. Pain and longing, or…
I don’t know anymore. I don’t know why I bother. If I could not paint, I wouldn’t. I’d quit in a minute. Only being here is where I feel alive, despite all the stink and the mess. And maybe I’d get somewhere, if Greg would stop interrupting me.
He can’t suspect something. Can he?
The Butterfly Trap
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Release: March 2025
Format: Print, Digital
Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Anya and Greg seem to be the golden couple, until dark secrets come to light and unleash inevitable devastation in this slow-burn he said/she said psychological suspense novel.
Greg has his life all planned out: become a doctor, buy a house, and have a wife and children – and when he meets Anya during his post-doc studies in Boston, all of his dreams seem to come true. It’s love at first sight, and Greg doesn’t shy away from changing his life to provide Anya, his beautiful butterfly, with everything she wants and needs.
Anya is a struggling artist, determined to make it as a painter in Boston’s art scene – but getting involved with shy and sweet Greg could thwart her lifelong ambition. Their relationship unfolds like a classic love story . . . except that Anya seems to be hiding something that unsuspecting Greg soon must face.
Are Greg and Anya truly the perfect couple, or will jealousy, uncertainty, and dangerous machinations break them apart in the most dreadful way imaginable?
About the author
Before turning to a life of crime (fiction), Boston Globe-bestselling author Clea Simon was a journalist. A native of New York, she came to Massachusetts to attend Harvard University and never left. The author of three nonfiction books and 32 mysteries, most recently the psychological suspense The Butterfly Trap, her books alternate between cozies (usually featuring cats) and darker psychological suspense, like the Massachusetts Center for the Book “must reads” Hold Me Down and World Enough. She lives with her husband, the writer Jon S. Garelick (another Boston Globe alum), and their cat Thisbe in Somerville, Massachusetts.