MDT-48 is an experimental drug designed by the CIA during its infamous Project MK-Ultra, which was developed to unlock the full potential of the human mind. Ned Sweeney is an unassuming, milquetoast account manager at an advertising firm. When the man and the drug are combined in a clandestine experiment, Sweeney becomes something else, a madcap machine of computation and prediction, dazzling random strangers in bars, accompanying Dylan Thomas on a bender and spending a few hours holed up with Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe. But the subsequent crash leaves him despondent, confused and with a debilitating craving for more. Half a century later, Sweeney’s grandson Ray has been told his grandfather committed suicide. But an offhand remark from a retired government official upends that story. Ray begins leveraging his contacts as a political operative to dig into his grandfather’s past, embarking on a search that will change his life forever.

Project MK-Ultra is not fiction, and author Alan Glynn ably contends with the ever-changing boundary between human enhancement and treatment that both that project and modern pharmaceutical developments imply. Furthermore, Glynn’s writing is as sharp as ever, conjuring tension and drama fit for an action film out of what is essentially a political thriller. His characters, especially the cantankerous Clay Proctor, are compelling and memorable, and they are well deployed. Receptor’s sole failing is that its plot can move a touch too quickly, rushing through relationships and romances in ways that limit their credibility. But Glynn’s dramatic instinct is maintained throughout. The potential of MDT-48 is demonstrated with flashbacks to Ned Sweeney’s story, and the circumstances of his death are revealed as they happened, not in a retrospective or historical narrative. Glynn unfailing obeys the rule of showing rather than telling, and does so with memorable elegance. Perhaps his chief accomplishment in Receptor is his ability to shift the language of his dialogue. Ned Sweeney is almost aggressively bland for the most part, but speaks in kaleidoscopic swirls of persuasive fervour when on MDT-48.

All told, for anybody who enjoyed The Dark Fields (now titled Limitless) and wants a fast-paced thriller that still has time to question the morality of medical enhancement, Receptor would make an excellent choice.

Lisa Jewell’s domestic thrillers regularly show up on bestseller lists, and her latest, Watching You, should be no exception. The mysterious murder at its center unfolds gradually, as piece by piece the past and present relationships between her intriguing cast of characters begin to fit together.

Tom Fitzwilliam is the new headmaster of the Melville Academy in Bristol, England, and he’s called Superhead by the local newspaper due to his many postings to failing schools and his reputation for quickly turning them around. Tom lives with his wife, Nicola, in an upscale neighborhood. Nicola is an enigmatic, unhappy woman with a troubled past. Their only child, 14-year-old Freddie, believes he has Asperger’s. He hopes to work for MI5 one day and spends all his free time spying on the neighbors from his upstairs window, documenting what he sees with his camera and keeping a logbook of the neighborhood comings and goings.

One of Freddie’s voyeuristic targets is Joey Mullen, a young woman who lives two doors down from the Fitzwilliams. Joey is newly married and drifting from job to job. She and her husband live with Joey’s older brother, Jack, a physician, and his wife, Rebecca, a “strait-laced systems analyst.” Rebecca is pregnant, but she’s apparently not overjoyed about becoming a mother. Joey is completely smitten with Tom Fitzwilliam and begins planning how to meet him “accidentally,” which is all documented by Freddie’s watchful eyes.

Sixteen-year-old Jenna, a student at the Academy, and her mother live nearby, and they’re also subjects of Freddie’s surveillance. Jenna’s mother, who increasingly shows signs of paranoia, seems to believe she saw the Fitzwilliam family on holiday years ago, and that they were involved in an unpleasant incident that she can’t quite remember.

From the novel’s early pages, Jewell includes excerpts from police interviews conducted at the Bristol police station. The reader knows someone has been murdered but not their identity. Little by little, Jewell sprinkles clues about the pasts of each of her characters, and these hidden connections to the victim may turn out to be motives to commit murder. But only near the end does one suspect emerge as the killer—and a shocking final revelation completely takes the reader by surprise.

Jewell’s latest will be quickly devoured by readers of Gillian Flynn, A.J. Finn and Ruth Ware.

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.