A literary thriller that will appeal to fans of Donna Tart’s Secret History, been bought by Cape in the UK after a four-way auction.
In Dismissal by Michael Mezzo a beloved teacher’s death brings the truth about a vanished student to the surface, unravelling the lives of four people bound by the past.
Cape says: “The death of Bill Hazzard, English teacher at the prestigious Thorpe School, reveals the truth behind the decades-old disappearance of a student, Ana Silva.
“Now, over the course of a single school day, four people complicit in her fate confront events that have haunted them for years. Their stories take them from Thorpe’s classrooms and corridors to neighbouring Connecticut mansions, from lakeside Swiss towns to sleepy villages on Cape Cod. But no matter how far their paths stray from campus, the secrets of their shared past reverberate to the present, drawing them into a new crisis with potentially tragic consequences.”
Mezzo is an English teacher who has taught in public and private high schools in the US and UK, and currently works and lives in Connecticut. Prior to his career in education, he worked in publishing as an editor of fiction and narrative non-fiction.
Cape senior commissioning editor Alex Russell bought UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein.
Russell said: “Michael Mezzo’s writing is masterly. Dismissal is a breathtaking novel about secrets, guilt, memory and privilege with magnetic characters, vividly drawn locations and propulsive storytelling. With such high-profile fans already lined up, Dismissal promises to be the standout literary thriller of summer 2027.”
