Abigail Dean’s The Death of Us (HarperCollins) opens not with a crime, but with news of an arrest. A serial killer who terrorised south London for decades has been caught, and Isabel, one of his victims many years ago, has been told of the arrest. “He’s called Nigel,” she says, sardonically, to her former partner, Edward, who was in bed beside her when their home was invaded by the killer. “What were you expecting? Adolf?” he answers.
Dean previously told the story of a daughter’s escape from the family home where her father had chained her up, in Girl A, and of a school shooting in Day One, both excellent and disturbing novels. She is out this time to explore a series of sadistic crimes, but also the impact they have had on the survivors. A love story too, that of Isabel and Edward, who meet as students. But how does any romance survive after the violence and cruelty of what they go through? Dean cleverly weaves together past and present for maximum impact, moving from the courtroom where a series of victims are explaining how Nigel Wood ripped their lives apart, to the burgeoning lives of Isabel and Edward inching inexorably towards their meeting with a killer. This is a classy, elegant thriller – just like its protagonist, the enjoyably prickly Isabel.
Alafair Burke brings us another slice of sheer class in The Note (Faber & Faber), in which May, Lauren and Kelsey head to the Hamptons for a long-awaited reunion. Friends at summer camp in their youth, they have all, in different ways, since been publicly shamed. While knocking back the drinks, the trio are irritated by a couple stealing their parking spot. “It’s like there’s no such thing as shame any more. So it’s not just about a parking spot … People are objectively horrible now,” rants May. After more drinks, they decide to leave a note on the couple’s car. Karma. “He’s cheating. He always does.” But then the man goes missing and the three of them find themselves in the middle of a missing persons investigation, which brings to light old secrets and crimes. Burke is a pleasure to read, her characters believable and problematic and interesting. And the twists and turns of her plot are perfectly planned.
There are three strong women at the heart of Louise Jensen’s The Liar (HQ): Mel, a social worker, and her daughters Jen, 26, and Amy, 13. Their close relationship is the novel’s beating heart, and Jensen depicts with great tenderness a family struggling for money but not for love. But then Mel heads off to see her brother, leaving Jen in charge of meeting the new lodger, Luke. Then Mel stops getting in touch and Luke starts behaving strangely, going through their things and asking odd questions. Does he know anything about Mel’s disappearance, and was Jen right to let him into their house? The problems build as Amy chats naively to a stranger online and Jen starts to wonder who she can trust, while secrets from her past come back to haunt her. This is a nicely put together thriller shot through with panache.
Chuck Wendig’s The Staircase in the Woods (Del Rey) takes a seemingly straightforward format – “five teenagers went into the woods. Only four of them came out” – and adds a healthy dose of horror to it. There’s the police investigation, of course, asking Lauren, Nick, Owen and Hamish what happened to Matty that night. But the four friends know that they’ll never be able to admit the truth – that a strange staircase appeared in the woods, and Matty walked up it and vanished at the top. Twenty years later, they have tried to forget what happened. “Don’t even think about it. Don’t think about that day. Don’t put his name in your mind.” But they’re brought back together when the staircase reappears, and decide to go looking for the friend they abandoned years earlier. I won’t spoil what lies at the top, but it’s pleasingly nightmarish and very messed up. I’ll be honest: it’s more horror than thriller, so count yourself duly warned. But for all ye brave enough to enter here, it’s a deliciously scary tale of friendship and courage – as well as evil, murder and all that jazz.
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