Thriller

The clever title for this ripper tale doesn’t make it clear who is the odd child out here; fifteen year old Noah Sadler, who has terminal cancer, or his mate Abdi Mahal, a Somali refugee in Britain and the one of the few non-white faces at his posh school. When Noah ends up in a […]

This comforting little winner is the fourth in Cleeves’ series featuring the formidable Vera Stanhope, whose sandals and terrible sense of dress hide a keen intelligence and understanding of humankind. The story is intriguing enough: Vera finds a social worker strangled in a steam room, but the story is less interesting that witnessing Vera cajole […]

Josie Buhrman’s father is murdered and her twin sister’s testimony is used to convict a teenage neighbour of the crime. Thirteen years later a true crime podcast, a la Serial and The Teacher’s Pet, questions whether the right person was convicted of the crime. This quite decent thriller explores the effect of the podcast from […]

”The first stage of grief is revenge” reads the header on this neat little thriller. Given that, the protagonist Blum is just the kind of wife her policeman husband needs when he is mown down by an unknown driver. Blum has serious form, having mercilessly dispatched her parents eight years earlier. Blum is tough and resourceful […]

Pretty good, though a little hard to keep track of who’s who when the lives of two women are touched by same perpetrator. Eve is killed while investigating an earlier attack on Melody which left Melody in a coma and resulted in a wrongful conviction. Eve’s voice comes to us from beyond the grave and […]

You’ve got to love a book that starts with a woman whining about how hard it is to dig a grave, especially when it turns out she’s digging it for her husband. This one won’t change your life or encourage deep thinking, but it is a ripper read. The main character, Erin, is quirky, capable […]

Such a silly book. Three women, friends from twenty years ago, go on a holiday to a Mexican resort and spend several days addressing their past and present insecurities in a manner reminiscent of six year olds. The writing is mired in cliche after cliche, like this: “She followed him, wondering whether he might hold […]

A deeply uncomfortable read. Not just for its graphic decription of the rape of a 15 year old girl, but for the feelings the narrator stirs up in the reader. Alan is a psychiatrist who says of his wife: “I do not admire her….I feel intellectually superior to her….I have encouraged her to pursue a […]