Dervla McTiernan’s 2024 novel, What Happened to Nina?, is a standalone psychological thriller from the award-winning author of The Murder Rule and the Cormac Reilly crime series. A New York Times bestseller, the novel centers on the disappearance of 20-year-old Nina Fraser after a weekend getaway with her boyfriend, Simon Jordan. When Simon returns home alone with a story that fails to add up, a tense standoff erupts between Nina’s working-class family and Simon’s wealthy and influential parents, who immediately deploy their vast resources to control the narrative and protect their son.

The novel uses a multi-perspective narrative to explore how a personal tragedy becomes a public spectacle. The case quickly goes viral, allowing the novel to examine The Use of Social Media to Manipulate Public Opinion, as the Jordans galvanize online sleuths and an unscrupulous public relations campaign to distort the facts and turn the grieving Frasers into targets. McTiernan also investigates The Impact of Privilege on the Fight for Justice, detailing how the Jordan family uses their money and influence to hire elite lawyers and stonewall the police. At its core, the story is a study of The Tension Between Parental Care and Moral Compromise, showing how the primal instinct to protect a child drives both sets of parents to cross legal and ethical lines in a desperate battle to protect and avenge their children.

This guide refers to the 2024 First Harper Large Print Edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide contain depictions of physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual harassment, sexual violence, bullying, graphic violence, substance use, cursing, illness, and death.

Plot Summary

Twenty-year-old Nina Fraser is missing after a weekend trip with her long-time boyfriend, Simon Jordan. In the Prologue, Nina recounts how her relationship with Simon has grown controlling and abusive. During their trip to his family’s new cabin in Stowe, Vermont, Simon intentionally causes Nina to fall during a rock climb. Shaken and bruised, Nina resolves to break up with him for good. The narrative then shifts to Nina’s mother, Leanne Fraser, and her husband, Andy. Their worry intensifies when they learn from Simon’s wealthy parents, Rory and Jamie Jordan, that Simon has returned home alone. The Jordans claim Nina broke up with Simon for another man and then left with friends. Unable to reach Nina, whose phone goes straight to voicemail, Leanne and Andy report her missing to the Vermont State Police. Detective Matthew Wright and his partner, Officer Sarah Jane Reid, begin the investigation, quickly discovering that Nina’s phone and credit cards have been inactive since the night she disappeared.

The case rapidly escalates into a public battle between the two families. When questioned by police, Simon alters his story, claiming Nina was cheating on him and that he left her at the Stowe cabin after a bitter argument. To control the narrative, Rory Jordan hires an aggressive PR firm and a top criminal defense lawyer, Arnie Waugh. The firm launches a smear online campaign, using bots and creating fake news channels like Justice for Simon, to discredit the Fraser family. They circulate theories that Leanne is an unstable, negligent mother and that Andy is a pedophile, creating a toxic social media storm that engulfs the small town. Desperate for answers, Leanne breaks into the Stowe house herself and finds Nina’s abandoned hiking gear. The Jordans security sends an alert to the police and Nina is arrested for breaking and entering. To force the Jordans’ hand, Leanne and Andy use a police press conference to publicly request permission to search the expansive property, a request the Jordans cannot refuse without looking guilty.

Before the search begins, Rory reviews his home security footage from Stowe and discovers that Simon tampered with a camera the night before Nina disappeared to hide the trailhead from view. Fearing what this implies, Rory drives to the property in the dead of night. He follows the trail to the spot where the dog alerted and unearths a shallow grave containing Nina’s body, wrapped in a rug. To protect his son, Rory moves the body, weights it down, and sinks it in the property’s lake. Later, Rory confronts Simon about the body, and Simon admits to killing Nina, claiming it was an accident. 

During the search of the Jordans’ property, a retired cadaver dog alerts to a patch of recently disturbed earth on a remote trail—the concealed grave where Rory found Nina’s body. Forensic analysis of the main house reveals that the living room floor was cleaned with a detergent containing sodium percarbonate, a chemical that effectively neutralizes luminol tests for blood. Meanwhile, Nina’s friend Julie reveals to Leanne that she had recently seen fingerprint-shaped bruises on Nina’s wrist and that Nina had been asking questions about abusive relationships, confirming Leanne’s fear that Simon was hurting her daughter. Fueled by this knowledge and the mounting evidence, Leanne confronts Simon at the search site and punches him in the face in front of numerous witnesses and cameras, leading to her arrest for assault. 

The online harassment intensifies, targeting not only Leanne and Andy but also their 15-year-old daughter, Grace, who is tormented at school. Feeling isolated, Grace secretly communicates with Simon, who she believes is also a victim. He persuades her to meet him in the woods, where he attempts to kiss her. Terrified, Grace escapes on her horse and reveals the incident to her parents, solidifying their belief in Simon’s predatory nature. Meanwhile, Rory hires an elite criminal defense attorney for Simon. After the meeting, Jamie drives Simon to the Stowe house, and Simon breaks down, confessing that he killed Nina. He worries that the police will search his phone and find that he googled how to clean up a crime scene. Jamie takes his phone and hurls it into the lake.

The murder investigation and the Jordans online campaign against them take a physical and emotional toll on Andy and Leanne, leaving them fearful that they will never know the truth about Nina. In a moment of desperation, Andy hikes to the Jordans’ main residence, armed with a gun. He sees Simon fleeing the house with a large backpack and follows him deep into the mountains to a remote hiker’s hut. Andy confronts Simon at gunpoint, and Simon confesses that Nina’s death was an accident. He says they had an argument, he pushed her, and she fell, fatally striking her head on the stone hearth. Andy shoots Simon and carries his body down the mountain. Andy calls Leanne from a nearby abandoned house and confesses. Taking control, Leanne instructs Andy to remain hidden while she establishes an online footprint suggesting Andy was at home all morning and driving to the local supermarket to reinforce her own alibi. She evades a trailing journalist, instructs Andy to get in the trunk of her car with Simon’s body, and returns to the inn where they bury Simon’s body under the brick floor of their barn. They vow to never speak of it again. 

Meanwhile, Matthew’s investigation continues. After Jamie throws Simon’s phone into the Stowe lake, falsely claiming she dropped it by accident, Matthew obtains a warrant to search the water and retrieve the phone. At the lake, divers discover Nina’s body. Medical examination confirms she died from a blow to the head and reveals a fractured jaw and older bruises, indicating a pattern of abuse. With Simon now missing, Rory is arrested and charged as an accessory to murder for moving the body. Simon becomes an official fugitive, with the police and the public believing he has fled the country. Weeks later, as the Frasers attempt to rebuild their lives, Jamie visits their home. Devastated, she tells Leanne she does not believe Simon ran away and suspects he is dead. She begs Leanne to give her the peace of knowing the truth, asking her to simply nod if Leanne knows Simon is dead. Leanne, staring into the eyes of the other broken mother, thinks of her own family’s survival and coldly states, “I can’t help you” (482), before shutting the door.