Gruesomely gripping
It’s holiday and we’re at the coast. In the shade, on the warm sand, I like reading pitch-black noirs as a delicious contrast to the bright sky and blue sea.
The Inmate by Freida McFadden
If Freida writes a domestic noir, I know I’m going to read it—and she writes a few a year. I almost absorb them by osmosis—they’re so gripping the pages turn themselves. This woman has a staggering number of plots and characters in her head.
Brooke Sullivan returns to her hometown after her parents’ death, where things didn’t end well for her when she was sixteen and pregnant—and when she testified against her high school sweetheart, Shane, sending him to prison for murder. Their son is now ten years old. The only job she (a trained nurse) can get is at the prison—the very same prison where Shane is incarcerated. She doesn’t mention this in the interview.
Shane is brutally attacked in prison and she has to stitch him up. She remains cool and professional, but the still attractive and charming man suddenly makes her question what really happened back then. Is he manipulative or innocent?
She and a friend had been partying with another girl and three boys at Shane and his mother’s farmhouse—his mother was away. The evening ended in bloodshed, with an attempted murder of Brooke—someone tried to strangle her from behind. She never saw his face, but she smelled Shane’s aftershave. Two of the other kids were also murdered. Fortunately, Brooke’s neighbour Tim—a good boy who had loved her since childhood—was there to save her.
Now she starts spending time with Tim again, who has grown into a strong, handsome man and is still in love with her. He is steady and considerate, and befriends her son, who looks strikingly like Shane. They begin a relationship, but in prison Shane warns her that Tim is dangerous and that she should stay away from him. Who should she believe?
You’ll have to read for yourself to find out who the villain is and who can be trusted. There are constant flashbacks to that night when she lost her virginity, became pregnant, and when two of her classmates were brutally murdered on a deserted farm.
The book keeps you guessing until the very last page.
The Inmate by Freida McFadden is published by Poisoned Pen and costs R295 at Graffiti.
My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeney
Here’s another nail-biter that will keep you wondering. Eden Fox is an artist on the eve of her first major exhibition. She goes for a run, as usual without her phone or purse—only her house key. When she returns, her key doesn’t fit the door. A strange woman who looks remarkably like her opens the door and insists that she is Eden Fox. Her husband, Harrison, appears too—and doesn’t recognize her at all. He advises her not to bother his wife. They call the police, and she runs off and hides in the garden of their beautiful old house, Spyglass. Nightmare, right?
Later, still in her running clothes and freezing cold, she passes the gallery and sees the other woman opening her exhibition with a proud speech. She and her husband had only recently moved to the coastal town of Hope Falls, and she hadn’t met anyone yet, so everyone assumes the other woman is Eden. She breaks into her own house—only to find all her belongings gone. Without her phone or purse, she can’t prove her identity. What is her husband up to?
Naturally, the reader sympathizes with poor Eden—but another character also captures the imagination: Olivia Bird, or Birdy, whose grandmother once owned Spyglass. She lives in London and discovers she is terminally ill. Unsure how much time she has left, she returns to Hope Falls. Where does she fit into the picture?
The reader is left trying to untangle the characters’ identities. There are plenty of intrigues and an ending you won’t easily see coming.
My Husband's Wife by Alice Feeney is published by Pan MacMillan and costs R395 at Exclusive Books.
The Last Word by Taylor Adams
I’ve saved the best—the most unbearably suspenseful—for last. I think this is just about the most gripping book I’ve ever read. The night disappeared into a black hole while I frantically kept turning pages. I didn’t know it was possible to sustain tension so tightly, page after page, throughout an entire book.
I sometimes think Afrikaans crime fiction is overloaded with characters, subplots, and side intrigues, along with technical details about explosives, nuclear weapons, international smuggling, and poaching. This novel is deceptively simple, with roughly three main characters—the rest appear only briefly.
Emma is house-sitting at a coastal home in Washington. It rains constantly, and she has only her golden retriever for company. Since experiencing a tragedy and losing her husband, she reads obsessively. She longs for him and blames herself for an accident the reader only fully understands late in the book.
There is another soul nearby—a man in a house across from hers watches her through a telescope, and she watches him in return. He is older, a writer with a drinking problem. They sometimes communicate by writing messages on whiteboards, and occasionally play hangman. He recommends a thriller. She reads it and is so outraged that she writes a scathing online review—it’s the worst book she’s ever read.
The author replies online and asks her to remove the review. She refuses. Then he begins stalking her, watching her. He even gains access to the house she’s looking after. The older writer tells her the stalker’s real name, and she discovers he is unstable, dangerous, mentally unwell.
Now it becomes a cat-and-mouse game. It soon becomes clear that the unstable writer’s previous horror novels were not fiction at all. Fortunately, Emma is brilliant and resourceful, and the neighbour tries to help her from a distance.
I can’t tell you how unputdownable this book is. You need nerves of steel. Of course, there are several twists in the tail. It’s a brilliant thriller.
The Last Word by Taylor Adams is published by Hodder & Stoughton and costs R990 at Exclusive Books.
