In her latest novel, Our Kind Of Cruelty, Araminta Hall tells the tale of a young man, emotionally stunted due to a poor childhood.  When his girlfriend breaks up with him after an admitted indiscretion, he thinks she is playing a game in attempt to get him to earn his way back to her.  Her quick engagement and marriage only lead him further down the path, until he has convinced himself that the only way to save her and prove that he still loves her is to kill her new husband.  When both are charged with the crime, the jury, and the reader, must determine if the game was only in his mind, or if he truly was manipulated.

Hall never comes out and tells you if Verity was truly playing along with Mike, or if it was all in his head.  Given some of her comments about the genesis of the story, how “the continued injustices perpetuated against woman in our so-called civil society” fueled the first draft, one can only assume that she was an innocent bystander to the men in her life and got caught up by the legal system.