“The Last Thing He Told Me” has already picked up several major awards over the course of its best-selling run, including the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Thriller/Suspense novel of 2021. The story follows Hannah, a woman who must forge a connection with Bailey, her 16-year-old stepdaughter, after her husband Owen disappears mysteriously following an embezzlement investigation. He only leaves his wife a single note that reads: “Protect Her.” Hannah and Bailey work together to discover the truth about their loved one’s past while evading the suspicions of law enforcers … but everything is not as it may seem.
The TV series version of “The Last Thing He Told Me” was created by Laura Dave, along with her husband, the Oscar-winning screenwriter Josh Singer (“First Man,” “Spotlight,” “The Post”). “I was consumed with the Enron trial, the hubris behind the people that allowed that to happen,” Dave told Variety in 2021, explaining that the idea for the novel first came to her in 2003:
“I saw an interview back then with Linda Lay, the wife of Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, in which she said, ‘My husband’s done nothing wrong. He’s not guilty.’ I had no idea if she believed that or not. I started thinking of a woman who found herself newly married to someone that the world is telling her is so paradoxical to her understanding of who her partner is.”
