With cunning psychological prowess, Tana French’s first standalone crime novel after six Dublin Murder Squad mysteries plumbs the recesses of our darkest thoughts.

In Dublin, on an almost-Halloween evening, Toby Hennessy, his girlfriend and his cousins are hanging out at Ivy House, Uncle Hugo’s grand abode, asking each other, “What’s the worst thing you ever did?” The game is a way of tiptoeing around how each of them may be connected to the discovery of a skull in the wych elm tree in the Ivy House garden.

The macabre discovery is not the only recent misfortune in the Hennessy family. Uncle Hugo has a brain tumor, and Toby nearly dies when he’s attacked in his flat, possibly in connection to a scandal at the art gallery where he works. The plot surrounding the skull comes into focus through Toby’s murky lens of pain, frustration and the medications required after this tragic combination of events. Toby has always been lucky, a handsome charmer who can talk his way out of scrapes and befriend just about anyone. But who is he if his luck has run out?

French rips open the chasm between Toby’s before and after, viscerally describing his fear as “dark, misshapen, taloned, hanging somewhere above and behind me waiting for its next moment to drop onto my back and dig in deep.” Add to Toby’s troubles his worried girlfriend and sensitive, conniving cousins, and it becomes apparent that The Witch Elm is about more than the crime behind the skull; it is about what happens when a great upheaval cracks open life’s shell and reveals one’s true potential.

With this thorough search into the criminal mind, French reaffirms her place as one of our finest crime novelists. Her characters become as familiar as family yet as unpredictable as strangers, creating a chilling sense that everything could shift at any time.

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Some novelists run the risk of overstaying their welcome, perhaps overwriting due to indulgence in a particular character or scenario. Roddy Doyle (Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha) never feels like one of those writers. His stories, from short fiction to novels, are tightly wound coils of energy, humor and insight, waiting to spring on us. Smile is another stellar example of Doyle’s brand of dense, kinetic storytelling. In just over 200 pages, Doyle manages to tell us something startling, funny and strange about the nature of human tragedy and pain.

Smile follows Victor, a recently separated writer living on his own for the first time in years. Victor spends his evenings having a pint at the local pub, until this quiet ritual is interrupted by Fitzpatrick, an obnoxious and seemingly inescapable man who claims they were schoolmates. Victor can’t remember Fitzpatrick, but he can remember his Catholic school days, and suddenly the trauma of what happened there begins trickling back into his mind. As Doyle jumps between past and present, Victor’s life spools out before us, building to a startling realization that shakes him to his core.

Doyle has a particular talent for humor and dialogue, but he also has the rare quality of being able to balance an economy of language with a dense sense of perception. Not a word is wasted here, and there aren’t many to waste. This is a gift, and it’s one Doyle harnesses with particular power in Smile. This drives the book at an almost fever pitch, practically daring you to turn each page and see what kind of incisive character wisdom he’s about to impart next. By the end, even if you think you know what’s coming, you will be dumbstruck by the storytelling prowess at work. Smile is a brief, brilliant, frenzied reading experience that only Roddy Doyle could deliver.

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

What is life inside a mental institution? Some literature and film paint institutional life as a soothing break from reality. The hospitals are often located in remote areas with rambling gardens, places where patients can take a break from the stressors and triggers of daily life.

Maybe there’s some truth to that. But Sam James can’t relate; she’s a psychologist at Typhlos, an institution in the middle of Manhattan. Her life outside the institution’s walls is often as gray as life inside. Although James is willing to take on the most difficult patients, she’s less eager to confront her own problems. Among those: alcohol and a controlling boyfriend.

When Sam is assigned Richard, with whom other therapists haven’t been able to connect, she’s sure she’s up for the challenge. But Richard refuses to answer even the most basic intake questions, setting Sam on her heels. As she attempts to understand him, she’s forced to take a look at herself and her habits as well. You could say it’s an example of the blind leading the blind.

Debut novelist A.F. Brady has stuck to the old adage “write what you know,” as her experience as a psychotherapist in Manhattan clearly informs The Blind. The result is a twisting, fast-paced tale that may leave readers, like Sam, examining what they know of themselves and mental illness.

Collaborative novels can be tricky propositions, even for writers as accomplished as the father-son duo of Stephen and Owen King. Each author’s stylistic and thematic concerns can stick out in jarring ways, creating a mashup far less seamless than either author perhaps would like. Sleeping Beauties is not one of those novels. In the grand tradition of team-ups like Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens and Stephen King’s own The Talisman (with Peter Straub), it is a triumph of two voices blending wonderfully to take us into a dark and all-too-real dream.

All the women in the Appalachian town of Dooling (and around the world) are falling asleep and refusing to wake up. Once sleep takes them, their bodies are covered by a mysterious, fluffy coating, and if they are disturbed, they awaken as homicidal maniacs. This development naturally sows chaos, inciting riots across the nation and sending men into a frenzy. In Dooling, though, there’s something different: Evie, an enigmatic woman with strange abilities, seems unaffected by the sleeping sickness. Some men think she’s a monster, others a savior, but whatever side they take in a world without women, Dooling is transformed into a powder keg.

Sleeping Beauties traffics in some very potent themes, from the obvious question of what an all-male society would devolve into to less obvious concerns like the politics of a women’s prison and the evolution of sexuality during the aging process. None of these issues, though, are dealt with cheaply or crudely. The book wields the best attributes of each author—Stephen’s ability to ratchet up tension, Owen’s wit and their joint gifts for character detail—with a deftness that makes it feel like the work of a single hybrid imagination. In the authors’ hands, the themes and characters of Sleeping Beauties become powerful fictional case studies, holding the mirror up to our own powder keg of a society in unforgettable and often unnerving ways.

This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.