The Blue Hour

The Blue Hour (2024) is a psychological thriller by British novelist Paula Hawkins. The novel follows Hawkins’s well-known thrillers, including The Girl on the Train (2015) and A Slow Fire Burning (2021). In The Blue Hour, the Fairburn Foundation has received the artistic estate of the late Vanessa Chapman, a well-known British contemporary artist. After a viewer claims that one of the artist’s sculptures contains a fragment of human bone, an investigation into a string of deaths and who is responsible unfolds. Hawkins’s novel explores themes of The Subjective Nature of Truth and Memory, Public Persona Versus Personal Identity, and The Dangers of Ambition through a complex mystery set partially on a remote island in Scotland.

This guide refers to the 2024 Penguin Random House UK edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, death, illness, suicidal ideation, addiction, rape, and cursing.

Plot Summary

The primary plot takes place in 2021. James Becker is a curator and creative director at the Fairburn Foundation, a charitable trust headquartered at the Fairburn Estate in the Scottish Borders region.