Deadly Animals, Marie Tierney’s brilliantly plotted debut mystery, introduces readers to Ava Bonney: a 14-year-old English girl obsessed with decomposing bodies.
Deadly Animals, Marie Tierney’s brilliantly plotted debut mystery, introduces readers to Ava Bonney: a 14-year-old English girl obsessed with decomposing bodies.
John Straley’s nonstop, high-octane Big Breath In introduces the unforgettable Delphine, a 68-year-old cancer patient-turned-investigator.
John Straley’s nonstop, high-octane Big Breath In introduces the unforgettable Delphine, a 68-year-old cancer patient-turned-investigator.
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Great psychological thrillers work on two levels: as action-based mysteries and as emotionally resonant personal stories. Jenny Milchman balances both in As Night Falls, as slightly anxious counselor Sandy Tremont faces murderers on her doorstep and secrets from her past with equal intensity.

Milchman creates tension by putting Sandy, her outdoorsy husband Ben and moody teenager Ivy in a contained setting: a remote home in the midst of a heavy snowstorm. When two escaped convicts make their way to this mountain hideaway—and can’t leave because of the storm—the mounting concern for Sandy's family’s physical safety is mirrored by the secrets that threaten to spill from her own mind. The action never falters as criminal mastermind Nick and his frighteningly large but surprisingly tender sidekick, Harlan, cruelly abuse the family and their neighbors. Milchman uses the maze-like interior of Sandy’s home to facilitate chase scenes and to mirror the confusion that reigns in Sandy’s mind. As she runs from Nick, she gets closer to some awful truths about her childhood. Simultaneously, Milchman flashes back to Nick’s own childhood, which is perhaps more troubling than all of the violence he’s wreaked as an adult. The two stories come together in a surprising twist that changes not only the dynamic between Nick and his victims, but also between Sandy and Ivy, who must learn to trust each other if they are going to come out of this alive.

Milchman sometimes sacrifices character development for action, but the momentum keeps the pages turning. Though the events in As Night Falls happen in one night, it’s not a short book. You may not be able to finish it in one sitting, but you’ll want to.

Great psychological thrillers work on two levels: as action-based mysteries and as emotionally resonant personal stories. Jenny Milchman balances both in As Night Falls, as slightly anxious counselor Sandy Tremont faces murderers on her doorstep and secrets from her past with equal intensity.

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K.T. Medina’s debut novel, White Crocodile, is a harrowing venture into the deadly fields of Cambodia, a Southeast Asian nation of volatile politics, poverty and danger. The author is a former member of the British armed forces, well qualified to describe the conditions in that small country where, in the 1970s, hostile political groups planted thousands of land mines that have victimized the native population to the present day.

After five years of experience in the British Royal Engineers, including three tours of duty clearing mines in Afghanistan, Tess Hardy has joined the humanitarian mine clearance charity MCT in Cambodia’s Battambang Province. Her secret agenda, known only to herself, is to discover what happened to her ex-husband, Luke, who was reported killed while searching out unexploded mines with MCT, but whose body was never recovered. Luke physically abused Tess during their marriage, but drew her back into his orbit during a disturbing phone call to her shortly before his death. Just after Tess arrives in Cambodia, she watches as another of Luke’s colleagues, an experienced mine clearer, is severely injured by a mine. Are these accidents—or murder?

Threading through this unnerving tale is the image of a White Crocodile, carved on doorways and homes and appearing on signposts in the minefields strewn with lethal weapons, fields that the fearsome crocodile appears to stalk on his killing missions. The creature is a symbol of death, connected to an old legend that intimidates the population into near passivity—or violent revenge. The White Crocodile is also blamed for a spate of disappearances and related killings in local villages, always of young single mothers whose deaths leave their small children without home and family. The story clicks at another level as readers learn these events may be related to the murder of a young Cambodian woman, oceans away in England. Tess, in uneasy alliance with Alex, a Croatian mine clearer with violent tendencies of his own, vows to defy the myth of the crocodile’s menace and uncover the mystery behind the disappearances and deaths.

The danger of unexploded mines in the Cambodian fields serves as a frightening symbol of the brutality that victimizes the terrified, closemouthed populace and throws into sharp relief the political agencies sent to aid villagers—groups that often inspire the very forces that victimize.

White Crocodile is an arresting, disturbing and memorable read.

 

RELATED CONTENT: Go Behind the Book with author K.T. Medina.

K.T. Medina’s debut novel, White Crocodile, is a harrowing venture into the deadly fields of Cambodia, a Southeast Asian nation of volatile politics, poverty and danger. The author is a former member of the British armed forces, well qualified to describe the conditions in that small country where, during three decades in the 1970s, hostile political groups planted thousands of land mines that have victimized the native population to the present day.

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When a murder mystery is set in Washington, D.C., readers expect a good dose of politics, hallowed halls and monuments. That is not the case with Murder, D.C. by Neely Tucker, the second book in a series featuring crime reporter Sully Carter. Carter is a modern hero, emotionally and physically scarred from his Bosnian reporting days. He's a flawed individual who nonetheless retains his integrity when pursuing the truth of a story.

Now a stateside reporter, Carter needs a riveting story to help his lackluster career so he can return to overseas reporting. When young scholar Billy Ellison, the last member of the most powerful black family in Washington, is found dead in a drug-infested, no-man’s-land sliver of D.C. called Frenchman’s Bend, Carter writes an article about “the murder capital’s murder capital,” which creates a storm of controversy. Carter’s job is to investigate what an upper-middle-class young man was doing in the Bend in the middle of the night, but events in the story create multiple avenues to pursue. However, there are forces from the highest and lowest levels of society that actively thwart Carter’s probing scrutiny. Showing the same grit, determination and fearlessness that made him an outstanding war correspondent, Carter refuses to accept the existing state of affairs and pursues the twisted threads of Frenchman’s Bend to their untangling.

Murder, D.C. tackles issues of race, poverty and the unsavory slave history of the nation’s capital. The fictional Frenchman’s Bend was a slave holding pen for about 100 years, and the gruesome portrayal of the Bend’s history is recounted realistically due to Tucker’s historical research.

When a murder mystery is set in Washington, D.C., readers expect a good dose of politics, hallowed halls and monuments. That is not the case with Murder, D.C. by Neely Tucker, the second book in a series featuring crime reporter Sully Carter. Carter is a modern hero, emotionally and physically scarred from his Bosnian reporting days. He's a flawed individual who nonetheless retains his integrity when pursuing the truth of a story.

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We usually celebrate our college alma maters with a sense of pride, while doing our best to forget high school altogether. But in Lori Rader-Day’s stunning second novel, a murder at a creepy roadside motel forces an unlikely heroine to revisit her painful high school years.

Somewhere in the cornfields between Chicago and Indianapolis, Juliet Townsend is trapped in a meaningless job as a maid at the seedy Mid-Night Inn in the small town of Midway, Indiana, “named for the fact that it wasn’t one place or another.” In high school, Juliet lived in the shadow of her best friend and track team rival, the beautiful and mysterious Madeleine Bell. Ten years later, Juliet’s still in town, living with her mother and scrubbing toilets after Madeleine left her behind for a glamorous life in Chicago.

Or so Juliet thinks, until the night Madeleine checks into the Mid-Night Inn. She’s still stunning, and sporting a giant diamond ring that Juliet—a kleptomaniac with a penchant for small, shiny objects—would love to get her hands on. But Madeleine isn’t there to gloat: She’s running from something and desperate to talk to Juliet. Overcome with jealousy, Juliet blows her off, and the next morning finds Madeleine’s corpse hanging from the motel balcony. When local police name her the most likely suspect, Juliet embarks on a mission to find the real killer by excavating her and Madeleine’s past as track stars at Midway High, when Madeleine mysteriously pulled out of a pivotal race and cost Juliet a scholarship.

Once again, Chicago author Rader-Day (The Black Hour) delivers a breathless psychological thriller with a killer first line, an irresistible mystery and lean chapters soaked with suspense. Comparisons to Tana French (A Secret Place) and Paula Hawkins (The Girl on the Train) have become all too common in the mystery genre, but with two consistently great novels now under her belt, Rader-Day has proved their equal in crafting taut, literary mysteries with fascinating heroines.

We usually celebrate our college alma maters with a sense of pride, while doing our best to forget high school altogether. But in Lori Rader-Day’s stunning second novel, a murder at a creepy roadside motel forces an unlikely heroine to revisit her painful high school years.

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English audiologist-turned-author S.J. Watson made a big splash with his debut thriller, Before I Go to Sleep, in 2011. The book chronicled the struggles of a woman who suffers from an acute form of amnesia, and has to reconstruct the details of her life every day when she wakes up. Nicole Kidman starred in the much-anticipated (though tepidly received) big-screen version of Watson’s book, which was translated into over 40 languages.

Watson mines similar themes—the slippery nature of memory and reality, a married woman confronting some serious inner demons—in his follow up, A Second Life. The crippling effects of amnesia are here replaced by the rabbit hole of social media, where people are free to reinvent themselves—sometimes to disastrous, even murderous, results. Julia leads a seemingly placid life in London, though it’s not long before we learn about her dark past: alcoholism, a son who is, in fact, not hers biologically, a youthful bohemian phase she can’t quite let go of. When the tragic news arrives that Julia’s sister has been murdered, old wounds severely aggravate new ones.

Watson’s depiction of Julia’s familial and domestic struggles are convincing, particularly the little wars husbands and wives wage. Julia—whose sister’s death “sliced [her] life in two”—literally becomes another person (online) in pursuit of her sister’s killer. She also drifts into a romantic affair that quickly becomes disturbing on a number of levels, though it must be added that Watson’s portrayal of the dark side of Internet hook-ups feels rather dated, even if it is meant to be a reflection of Julia’s naivete. The eventual solution will either read as bold and risky, or simply frustrating. Either way, Watson can’t be accused of skimping on the twists and turns.

A life sliced in two in A Second Life.
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Does a spy thriller written by a former CIA officer offer an unbiased view of the world of espionage? Who knows, but it seems the answer may be both yes and no.

Former CIA spook and burgeoning author Jason Matthews has an amazing feel for the insider lingo and relentless intrigue of the spy’s life. Palace of Treason, the second book in his series (following his debut, Red Sparrow), is a harrowing look into the lives of spies, including a CIA rookie named Nate and a gorgeous Russian intelligence operative named Dominika Egorova, who lives the precarious existence of a double agent, spying for the U.S. while maintaining her Russian cover.

On the other hand, this wealth of technical knowledge—and a breathtaking sense that the author’s been out in the field himself—at times produces an overdone, good-guy-bad-guy inflection that can be off-putting. In Matthews’ world, nearly all Russians are self-serving, smug and boorish, while the white hats in the CIA are “smooth and professional . . .  strong and reliable.” In this day and age it’s hard to believe that the double-dealing, crafty self-interest and sadism are so completely one-sided, and this tendency shadows what is an otherwise riveting narrative.

Matthews’ intricate plot follows Dominika the mole as she seeks to undermine and botch Russia’s efforts to encourage Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. She passes critical information to the CIA, always a half step away from discovery—there’s also an enemy mole operating inside the CIA who’s about to unmask and destroy Dominika, and each page brings that agent one move closer to proving her a traitor to Mother Russia.

Nate and Dominika maintain a hot love affair, adding to the tension and possibility that either may make a mission-destroying decision. The book offers up other, stranger bedfellows as well. Palace contains marvelous descriptions of murky, offbeat characters, as well as a disconcerting central role for Vladimir Putin that seems misplaced in this narrative full of otherwise fictional types.

This is stay-up-all-night reading, and we’re pummeled by hair-trigger actions on every page. There’s a striking sense that no one seems to win for long. It’s a world in which victories and setbacks follow each other hard and fast, in a game where both missions and lives are destroyed in an instant.

Does a spy thriller written by a former CIA officer offer an unbiased view of the world of espionage? Who knows, but it seems the answer may be both yes and no.

Review by

A powerful read from an impressive new voice, Freedom’s Child is an intricate portrait of a crass, swears-like-a-sailor woman who has lost everything and is fueled by an unabated fervor to find her daughter.

Contrary to her name, Freedom feels trapped, even though she’s on the other side of the country and a decade removed from her former life. Labeled as the promiscuous town drunk in a small Oregon community, she finds herself waxing in and out of suicidal thoughts. This isn’t what she wanted for her life, but it’s what she was assigned by the Witness Protection detail. The alcohol and self-inflicted psychological abuse serve as her own punishment for letting her life get so lurid.

Freedom’s shaken from this sluggish state when she hears news of Michael Delaney’s release from jail—and then silence from her estranged daughter’s Facebook page. She has to find her daughter before they do—the Delaney Boys, those Mastic Beach miscreants, her brothers-in-law. They’re out to get Freedom any way they can, because of what she did or what she was accused of, and what she would gladly let happen again if given the chance: the murder of her husband. Thus begins Freedom’s cross-country road trip to redemption and to clear the debt she’s harbored for 20 years. Along the way she encounters new and old friends who help her discover the person she should have been all this time.

Visceral and brazen, Jax Miller’s debut is an engrossingly raw exposé of one woman’s reparation, knotted with storylines from the dirty underbelly of biker bars, Native American legends, religious cults and one shocking plot twist you’ll never see coming. Congratulations to Miller for a standout first novel. You’ll read nothing like it!

A powerful read from an impressive new voice, Freedom’s Child is an intricate portrait of a crass, swears-like-a-sailor woman who has lost everything and is fueled by an unabated fervor to find her daughter.

“I was too angry to take my own life,” muses the protagonist of Sharon Bolton’s Little Black Lies. “Unless, of course, I could take Rachel’s first.” Readers expecting a conventionally likable heroine may be taken aback by Catrin Quinn, a woman too consumed by grief to feel much empathy for anyone around her. Catrin is a wildlife conservation expert in the Falkland Islands, a remote 2,000-person settlement in the south Atlantic. Until three years ago, she was a married mother of two. Then her best friend, Rachel, left her sons unattended in a car by the side of a cliff, allowing them to roll to their deaths.  

The tragedy ended Catrin’s marriage, as well as her affair with sexy ex-soldier Callum Murphy. It also left Catrin bitter, hopeless and preoccupied with revenge. When a visiting tourist’s young son goes missing, joining in the search brings her anguish even closer to the surface. She believes the child simply wandered away from his parent and drowned—but this is the third such disappearance in three years, and islanders are starting to wonder if there could be a killer in their midst. Then Rachel’s son disappears, and Catrin’s neighbors start to wonder if that killer might be her.

Lies evokes the wild landscape of the Falklands—a place where whale and seal sightings are common, wrecked ships lurk just off the coast and abandoned mines from the ’80s-era war still pose a threat. It also deftly portrays the mental states of its three narrators: Catrin; Callum, the ex-lover who still hopes to win her back; and Rachel, the accidental killer who uses pills and alcohol to numb her guilt. Each is deeply damaged and difficult to love, but this fast-paced and expertly plotted thriller forces readers to question whether any of them are capable of murder.

“I was too angry to take my own life,” muses the protagonist of Sharon Bolton’s Little Black Lies. “Unless, of course, I could take Rachel’s first.” Readers expecting a conventionally likable heroine may be taken aback by Catrin Quinn, a woman too consumed by grief to feel much empathy for anyone around her.

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In a windblown field near the sea in Norfolk, England, a land developer’s excavating machine uncovers first a silver wing, then the cockpit of an American World War II fighter plane, then the ghostly remains of a long-dead pilot staring up from inside.

Enter forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway, the central character in the engrossing mystery series by author Elly Griffiths. Like the previous books in the series, The Ghost Fields combines an atmosphere of eerie beauty, a reach that manages to encompass millennia and a style of low-key, dry humor that’s just plain satisfying.

The discovery of the grisly human remains ignites a series of mysteries. (The body, by the way, is not that of the plane’s pilot.) Soon Ruth and company are investigating throughout the Norfolk countryside, from the developer’s digging site to a derelict WWII American airfield—one of many known as “ghost fields”—to an old family estate whose lands date back to the Iron Age and may contain a few more skeletons in the closet—and elsewhere.

The success of Griffiths’ series is due in no small part to central character Ruth and a creative, comfortable cast of characters, including a couple of druids, one or two mismatched couples who nevertheless make a match, a crazy British family living out in the wilds and, of course, the irreplaceable DCI Nelson, a cop for all seasons if there ever was one. Nelson’s unconventional social skills make him one of the more intriguing antiheroes to come down the pike in ages. He’s irresistible precisely because he seems to be clueless about the depth of his relationship with Ruth. Though Griffiths describes him as “not a fanciful man,” we’re drawn to his blind spots as well as his sturdy confidence as he works alongside his three detective sergeants, who play no small role in the proceedings. The author’s addictive sense of humor raises the series a cut above the ordinary—not loudmouth, wise-guy humor, but rather more subtle and lasting.

Add to this the book’s salty, desolate atmosphere of endless marsh and lonely, ancient sands, and the book achieves a shivery aura of mystery you won’t soon shake, one that laces past with present in the inescapable march of time.

In a windblown field near the sea in Norfolk, England, a land developer’s excavating machine uncovers first a silver wing, then the cockpit of an American World War II fighter plane, then the ghostly remains of a long-dead pilot staring up from inside.

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In the chilling opening of Stephen King’s Finders Keepers, a sequel to his 2014 bestseller Mr. Mercedes, three words jolt elderly literary lion John Rothstein from a sound sleep, alerting him to the fact that he’s become the victim of a home invasion: “Wake up, genius.”

But these aren’t just any robbers. They’re led by Rothstein’s biggest (and baddest) fan, small-time criminal Morris Bellamy. Morris is unhappy that Rothstein has gone decades without publishing a new Jimmy Gold book (think John Updike’s Rabbit series), and he definitely doesn’t like that, in the last published novel, nonconformist Gold sold out to climb the corporate ladder at an advertising agency.

Morris kills Rothstein, stealing his money and his stash of notebooks—which, unbeknownst to him, include two more Jimmy Gold novels. But Morris is arrested for a different crime the next day, and the money and the notebooks are left to languish in a hiding place near his childhood home.

Fast-forward 35 years, and teenager Pete Saubers stumbles upon Morris’ treasure. The money comes in handy—Pete’s father is in chronic pain after being injured in the Center City Massacre, and the family is struggling financially due to medical bills and lost income—but the notebooks capture Pete’s imagination. Over the years, he falls in love with literature thanks to the story of Jimmy Gold. But when Morris is released from prison and realizes his hiding place has been discovered, Pete becomes his next target. 

Luckily, police detective Bill Hodges and his sidekicks, college student Jerome and tech-savvy but socially awkward Holly, who starred in Mr. Mercedes, are on the case, thanks to a call from Pete’s little sister, Tina, who’s worried about his strange behavior. 

At least one more novel featuring Hodges and the Center City Massacre victims is in the works. But the new characters shine as well: Pete is a worthy addition to King’s roster of memorable teen characters. He’s smart, brave and fiercely loyal to his family, especially Tina, but doesn’t always have the experience to make the right calls when it counts. Morris, on the other hand, is the sort of cold, calculating villain who will haunt your dreams. He’s spent decades waiting for those notebooks, and nothing is going to keep him from reading them.

King has long been interested in literary obsessions, and the divide between author and fan or creator and creation—think Misery, The Dark Half or Secret Window, Secret Garden. Finders Keepers continues to explore these ideas and adds another dimension: Pete and Morris are both willing to do a lot to hold on to Rothstein’s works. At what point does the hero become the villain? 

Readers will find themselves pondering this question and others at the close of this accomplished thriller.

 

In the chilling opening of Stephen King’s Finders Keepers, a sequel to his 2014 bestseller Mr. Mercedes, three words jolt elderly literary lion John Rothstein from a sound sleep, alerting him to the fact that he’s become the victim of a home invasion: “Wake up, genius.”

It’s difficult to imagine anything more traumatic than a child’s death. But when the deceased child is a twin, the living sibling can be a constant reminder of what’s lost.

That’s the case for Sarah Moorcroft, whose twin daughters were so perfectly identical that Sarah and her husband Angus relied on the girls’ word and personalities to determine who was who. Lydia and Kirstie were born on the coldest day of the year, earning them the nickname “the ice twins,” which was borne out by their blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin.

After Lydia dies in a fall, each family member’s sorrow reveals itself in different ways. Angus gets into a work argument that leaves him unemployed with a London-sized mortgage. Sarah struggles to get along with her husband and find work of her own. Most disturbingly, Kirstie begins claiming that she’s actually Lydia, and that Kirstie is the twin who died.

The family seeks a new start—and a less expensive lifestyle—on a Scottish island Angus inherited. Sarah is determined to put their lives back together as they live in and restore a squalid, barely inhabitable lighthouse, the island’s only structure. And if that means learning that the couple buried the wrong twin, well, Sarah is convinced they can move forward. 

In The Ice Twins, S.K. Tremayne depicts a family as isolated as the tiny isle they call home. Sarah, Angus and Kirstie (or is it Lydia?) have separated themselves from one another and their normal lives. They’re left metaphorically circling one another warily, trying to deduce what’s going on inside. 

As the Moorcrofts aim to unravel what, exactly, happened when one twin died, readers are given glimpses into each character’s thoughts. The resulting tale, written by a best-selling author under a pseudonym, peels back one layer at a time in a fast-paced, thrilling race to understanding.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s difficult to imagine anything more traumatic than a child’s death. But when the deceased child is a twin, the living sibling can be a constant reminder of what’s lost.
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Author Seán Haldane explores the frontier culture of 1869 British Columbia in an award-winning novel that wades through people’s preconceptions and ideas about savagery and civilization, set at a moment when geographic boundaries are expanding and Charles Darwin’s ideas are just beginning to challenge old frames of mind. This singular story offers a lively, up-close look at Victorian manners and views of that time, set in the context of cold-blooded murder.

Young Chad Hobbes has come from Victorian England to settle in Victoria, British Columbia, and after searching for work he joins the area’s new police force, assuming the duties of a sergeant after a white man is found brutally mutilated and murdered near an Indian encampment. The book becomes a fascinating detective story as Hobbes, dissatisfied with the quick arrest of an Indian for the crime, painstakingly pulls apart the seams of the case to discover the real perpetrator.

Hobbes’ investigation begins to uncover odd stories about the murdered man—an alienist, or early psychologist, of the time—who pursues an interest in “magnetation,” methods that employ both sexual and mystical “treatments.” The sergeant’s discoveries multiply as he questions the people whose lives touched that of the mesmerist, including those who sought his help.

The eventual solution of this superb crime novel is described in satisfying detail. The book, however, is not so much about the crime as about the mindset of this late Victorian era, told in an unvarnished way as Hobbes visits pubs, docks, parlors and police offices, and by all manner of people, from low-born servants to military officers, from clergy to members of the “finer” classes, each with long-held attitudes about their class-bound society. Each story adds a different slant to the tale.

Haldane gets under the skin of his characters, stripping away the civilized veneer to reveal the inner thoughts and desires of each individual, often at great odds with their public facades. Hobbes himself is forced to grapple with a confluence of feelings when he falls in love with a young Indian woman and must contrast his own preconceived notions of how “savages” think and act with the very different people and circumstances he actually encounters. All this happens at a crucial time in history when traditional ideas come face-to-face with a new world that’s about to lay waste to long-accepted notions about human nature.

Author Seán Haldane explores the frontier culture of 1869 British Columbia in an award-winning novel that wades through people’s preconceptions and ideas about savagery and civilization, set at a moment when geographic boundaries are expanding and Charles Darwin’s ideas are just beginning to challenge old frames of mind. This singular story offers a lively, up-close look at Victorian manners and views of that time, set in the context of cold-blooded murder.

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There seems to be no reason behind the string of teen suicides in the rural English village of Radcote. A young man dies in a strange motorcycle accident, quickly followed by the death of another boy. But were these really suicides, or were they murders? Perhaps these unexplained teen deaths are connected to the cluster of apparent suicides that occurred in the same community two years ago.

In her new psychological thriller, What You Left Behind, author Samantha Hayes creates a town where suspicion and grief have settled on the community like a cloud that won’t disperse. She effectively conveys a sense of creepy urgency in her cast of odd characters that includes Gil, a young man with undisclosed “issues” who’s given to peeking in windows; the mousy Sophia, who manages the homeless shelter in town and whose son was counted among the earlier suicide victims; and Frank, a menacing, rank-smelling regular in town and at the shelter.

Detective Inspector Lorraine Fisher arrives in Radcote for a vacation week with her sister, Jo. She arrives with her daughter, Stella, driving down “Devil’s Mile,” the road to her sister’s house, where flowers mark the site of the recent motorcycle tragedy. Fisher can’t help getting involved: Her creds as a cop make her hyper-aware of the strange circumstances that surround the so-called suicides, and her attention increases after her preteen daughter visits a local estate and horse farm and encounters Gil.

Meanwhile Jo worries about her 18-year-old son, Freddie, who suddenly loses interest in school and begins to disappear into his room for hours at a time. What’s happening to Freddie is key: He’s afraid to tell his family that frightening email messages on his laptop are delivering insinuations, demands and terrors that won’t go away. Sure, he thinks, “He could leave home, struggle to establish a new life somewhere. But one thing was for certain: wherever he went, cyberspace would go with him.”

Hayes knows how to ratchet up the suspense and the questions, including who’s behind the scary events—and why? She subtly magnifies the sense of foreboding that pervades both characters and setting. And this just may be one of those spine-chillers where not all of the loose ends will get tidied away.

There seems to be no reason behind the string of teen suicides in the rural English village of Radcote. A young man dies in a strange motorcycle accident, quickly followed by the death of another boy. But were these really suicides, or were they murders? Perhaps these unexplained teen deaths are connected to the cluster of apparent suicides that occurred in the same community two years ago.

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