Category Archives: #suspense

Nobody But Us by Laure Van Rensburg

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Handsome college professor Steven Harding and naïve young student Ellie Masterson drive from New York to a remote cabin for their first holiday together. Expectations are high for a romantic weekend, but what unfolds over those few days will totally blow your mind. Neither of them are who they say they are, and the dark truths underlying their twisted relationship are gradually exposed. 

I literally could not put this book down, and found myself holding my breath at certain moments.  Ellie and Steven were both compelling characters and one of the things I loved most about Nobody But Us was the way in which I got to understand how they had come to this dark place and what motivated their actions. It was such a compelling read.  And the atmosphere and sense of danger was ratcheted up by the setting – an ostensibly beautiful cabin in the remote wilderness, surrounded by trees, in the deepest of snowy winters – it totally heightened the almost-cinematic sense of jeopardy throughout. 

Timely, thought-provoking, deeply atmospheric, full of suspense – this has got to be one of the best psychological thrillers I’ve read for a very long time indeed. 

Every Little Secret, by Ruby Speechley

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If you’re looking for something that will take you right out of lockdown life, then look no further. This twisty-turny thriller is full of suspense, and the writer ratchets up the tension with almost every page. In fact I’d say it’s almost the definition of a page turner. I was totally absorbed in the story to the point where I was reading this book while cooking supper, much to my husband’s surprise! It’s about – well, that’s the thing. You think it’s one story but then you find out it’s something much, much darker…

Every Little Secret starts off focused on grieving mother, Maddy, who is struggling to cope with the death of her daughter Chloe – only to be hit with a second blow when the police tell her that her husband Max is missing, presumed drowned. As she tries to hold it together for the sake of her other child, she becomes consumed by the desire to find out what really happened to Max. Maddy’s sleuthing leads her into some dark places, and the twists and turns of the plot become almost – but not quite – unbelievable.

It’s hard to write a review of this book without giving the game away, but one of the things I particularly enjoyed about it was the way that the author got into the heads of the key protagonists, telling their parallel stories, so that from a psychological point of view, you really understood why they acted in particular ways at different times. The characters were so well drawn, and I liked the fact that the end wasn’t obvious, reflecting the messiness of human relationships. I’d definitely read another novel by this author, and found it a great escape at these difficult times.

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

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This novel was published yesterday, and I had high hopes, because I had loved Lucy Foley’s first book, The Hunting Party. If anything, The Guest List is even better. Set on a remote island over the course of a rather upmarket wedding party, The Guest List is a Poirot-like country house mystery where everyone’s a suspect and the real culprit is unexpectedly unmasked right at the very end.

What’s so clever about this is the way the author unravels the backstory for each of the main players so gently throughout the course of the book. You’re kept guessing with every turn of the page, anticipating some twists but definitely not others. I was absolutely riveted the whole way through, and – like The Hunting Party – the setting itself, the wild weather and astonishing scenery, becomes another of the characters alongside the different protagonists.

I could hardly believe it when I reached the end of the book, I wanted to go on reading it and follow the characters on beyond what happened on the Island.It’s dark, twisty, hugely suspenseful and the very definition of a modern murder mystery. Totally loved it and don’t want to say more about the plot because I don’t want to spoil it! Enjoy…

Can’t wait to see what she writes next.

The Lying Room by Nicci French

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I’ve long been a fan of Nicci French’s Frieda Klein series, one I go back to again and again, so I was really excited to read this stand-alone novel. I’m happy to report it absolutely did not disappoint. The heroine, Neve, is fascinatingly flawed and there were times when I wanted to shake her, but that’s a good thing, right? Means you’re totally ‘in’ the book, and that the characters and situation are both compelling and believable.

I won’t spoil the plot, with all its myriad twists and turns, but it begins when Neve, everyone’s best friend, discovers the body of a man she’s been seeing and decides to remove every trace that she’s ever been in his flat. Except that, this being a thriller, she’ll miss something crucial, which will come back and bite her at some inopportune moment. Well, she does, and it does, except that it’s early on and becomes a classic piece of misdirection. This book is like a masterclass on how to write a suspenseful thriller, because by the end of it you’ve changed your mind ten times about who the murderer really is and you’re still surprised how it turns out.

What Nicci French does so well is ratcheting up the tension with each new secret that’s revealed. There’s an incredible feeling of claustrophobia that grows throughout the novel until you can hardly breathe for wondering when the next blow will fall and whether Neve will survive it. I almost missed my stop on the tube at one point. And it makes a fantastic distraction from all the bilge that’s going on in the news at the moment. Definitely worth a read.

Now You See Them by Elly Griffith

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Elly Griffith is best known for her Ruth Galloway series, but I have a great fondness for her books about Max Mephisto (a famous magician – and also a movie star by the time this book opens) and Detective Inspector (now Superintendent) Edgar Stephens. Set in Brighton in the 1950s, the series opened with The Zig-Zag Girl, and her latest, Now You See Them, moves forward ten years or so to the time of mods and rockers.

Much has happened in between Now You See Them and the previous novel, to the point where you don’t necessarily have to be familiar with the earlier books in the series. It’s almost, but not quite, a reboot. One of Griffiths’ great strengths is her ability to write an ensemble cast of characters, so that you care about each and every one of them. Indeed, each face personal and life choices as well as becoming involved in the disappearance of three young women. It was great to see modern dilemmas, such as Emma (Edgar Stephens’ wife and a former detective herself) becoming dissatisfied with her role as a housewife, portrayed with sensitivity, whilst the mystery itself was absorbing enough to drive the story along.

The descriptions of Brighton are vivid, and the interweaving of historical details of the period work well. I’ve learned a lot about smugglers tunnels that I never knew, and I felt the story ended with a setup for a future spin-off that would work well. Her books are so cinematic in the way they’re written I find it extraordinary that none appear to have been optioned for broadcast.

Elly Griffith is one of those few authors I would pre-order books by in advance of publication, so it was a real treat to have been able to read an early copy via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

Three Hours, by Rosamund Lupton

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This has to be one of the best books I’ve read in a very long time. The action spans three hours during an attack on a school by what appear to be domestic terrorists, but that spare description really doesn’t do it justice. I’ve read Rosamund Lupton’s previous books but this one is undoubtedly her best so far. It’s a breath-taking read, she ratchets up the tension with every turn of the page and gets completely into the heads of her protagonists.

What’s so clever is the way she puts us right in the middle of the action in the school itself, into the minds of the teachers and pupils and the incredible acts of bravery and self-sacrifice which take place, and into the minds of the desperate families waiting for news of their children. It’s also an incredibly timely book, touching on themes of radicalisation and refugees, of belonging, and of the ways in which we ignore what’s really going on in people’s lives. From being in the room with a group of teenagers desperately trying to stay brave, to small children playing a terrifying game of hide and seek, while in the outside world, police investigators try to work out what’s going on and whether it’s safe to intervene, this is an extraordinarily gripping book.

I loved it so much that having raced through it a first time, desperate to know what happens next, I’m now reading it again in a more leisurely way – it’s one of those books which bears repeated reading, there’s so much richness and texture to it. Her descriptions are wonderful too, and it was a real heart-pounding, pulse-racing read.

I read this whenever and wherever I could grab a minute, I was so engaged in it. It was like going to the cinema to see a really good film, I couldn’t believe it when I got to the end, because I had been so transported by the story.

Three Hours will be published by Viking (Penguin UK) in 2020. I received a free copy via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

The Long Call, by Ann Cleeves

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Creating a character on which to build a potential series of books is no mean feat, and Ann Cleeves has form – once with Vera Stanhope and again with Shetland’s Jimmy Perez. But both of those series are as much about the landscape and location as they are their lead character, so I was interested to see how she would approach her new series and detective, featuring Detective Inspector Matthew Venn, set in North Devon. It’s an area that I have visited on a couple of occasions but don’t know well, and I was able to see it through her eyes, ‘the special light you only find close to the sea’.

One of the things I particularly liked about this first book in the series was the leading role given to people with learning disabilities (and their families), giving a wonderful window into a world that few of us understand.  As someone whose brother faces similar challenges, to have portrayals that go beyond the cliché of learning disability was wonderful. It made such a refreshing change to have proper, complex motives and choices attributed to people who are so often lumped together as ‘different’ and unable to rationalise the decisions they’ve made.

The story itself was absorbing, and it’s easy to see how the series could unfold. It was one of those books you read more slowly at the end than at the beginning, because although you really want to know what happens, you also don’t want it to end.  Can’t wait for the next one.

The Perfect Wife, by JP Delaney

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Can I just say, this book was not at all what I was expecting from the blurb, and it was all the better for it. A truly original premise, it tells the story of Abbie Cullen, wife to tech entrepreneur Tim, who wakes up after an accident to discover she’s an artificial intelligence, constructed from the memories of the ‘real’ Abbie years after her actual death.  So far, so clever, but this is much more than a smart idea. Abbie feels real to the reader, right from the opening sentence – “You’re having that dream again,” and you are immediately plunged into her reality.

At first, you believe the story’s about a man, desperate with grief, who creates an AI replacement for the wife he couldn’t bear to lose, with all the societal challenges this brings, but pretty quickly things take a darker turn. This really was the definition of a page turner for me, the pace and pressure ratcheting up the further into the book you get. This could so easily have become gimmicky and too much about the technology, but it’s the emotional connections and experiences which really drive the plot.

Make sure you put a good layer of suncream on before you open this book, because if you’re not careful you’ll get sunburned lying on your lounger, so distracted by what you’re reading that you forget to turn over.

The Dead Ex, by Jane Corry

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Now, I’ve got to be honest here, I’d never heard of Jane Corry before her name came up on a twitter post announcing that two of her books were reduced to 99p on Kindle.  I was waiting for a couple of books I’d pre-ordered to be published and had been reduced to re-reading the Frieda Klein series by Nicci French (v.good) for about the fifth or sixth time. Did I mention I read all the time?

Anyway, I thought I’d give her a whirl, because you can’t go wrong for 99p, right? 

It was great! Very twisty-turny, and although I was certain there was a twist coming, I couldn’t work it out, and I LOVE that in a thriller. I also particularly liked the fact that one of the protagonists, Vicki, has epilepsy, which affects her memory and means she can’t be certain that she didn’t have something to do with her ex-husband’s disappearance – the man at the centre of the plot.  People in my family have epilepsy and I thought that Vicki’s experience was very well done – not overblown or overdramatised but giving great insight into what it’s like to live with the constant risk of seizures.

The plot was quite complex and for quite a way into the book it’s hard to work out the connections between the different protagonists, despite hints and foreshadowing. I think that’s one of the reasons I liked it, because as a reader I had to concentrate more on what was happening in the present and what ‘might’ have happened in the past, and how everyone was interconnected. I wasn’t entirely sure whether I liked some of the characters, but then again I suppose that makes them true to life, because who does like everyone they meet…

I didn’t realise this until I looked her up, but Jane Corry is in fact a Sunday Times bestselling author of a number of novels, and she has a new one out in about a week’s time, I Looked Away. Don’t you just love it when you find a new author and you have a whole heap of new books to read? Can’t wait.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton

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I kept seeing this book mentioned on Twitter, and then it won the Costa First Novel Prize, and now it’s popping up on all sorts of novel prize lists, including the British Book Awards and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel Awards. Part of me almost rebelled against buying it and once I had I kept putting off reading it, I’d seen so many rave reviews.

Is it a crime novel? Well, sort of. It’s not as though you don’t know who the victim is right from the beginning, or even who the murderer is supposed to be, so there’s no mystery there. It’s the marmite of fiction, so far as I can see, because you’ll either absolutely adore it or you’ll end up chucking it across the room in frustration, there’s no room in between. I found it quite heavy going to start off with until I got to grips with the pattern and structure of the novel, but it is definitely worth persevering.

There’s a richness to the way it’s written, not just the ingenuity of the premise and plot, which make it a rewarding read. The characters are absorbing and the detailed historical research that the author must have done is worn lightly throughout, just enough scattered imagery and sensory colour to root you clearly in the period. He breaks all the rules you get taught when you’re first starting out trying to write a novel – multiple points of view, a plot that’s upside down and back to front, and a genre that’s hard to pinpoint. Yet it all works incredibly well, and it does have the pace and suspense of a thriller even though you already know whodunnit. Or you think you do. Kind of.

I’ve seen this book described as Quantum Leap meets Agatha Christie, but I think that leaves out the slight feeling of mysticism coming through the narrative. It’s ancient and modern all at the same time, and it made my head hurt to read (but in a good way).