The Banker's Wife
Written by Cristina Alger — The words ‘financial’ and ‘thriller’ are usually enough to send me running for the hills, and they’re there for all to see in the praise lavished upon this book. But something appealed, and I’m glad I trusted my instincts to…
Spare Room by Dreda Say Mitchell
The London-based author Dreda Say Mitchell has written a whole selection of gangster novels with strong female leads, but with Spare Room she’s venturing into new territory, the psychological thriller. From the very beginning she’ll have you wrong footed and turning or swiping pages constantly,…
Changeling
Written by Matt Wesolowski — In 1988, on Christmas Eve, seven-year-old Alfie Marsden and his father Sorrel drive through Wentshire Forest Pass, a dense wood on the border between Wales and England. A knocking sound starts emanating from the engine, then they get a flat….
Her Pretty Face
Written by Robyn Harding — Frances Metcalfe is at an all time low. She’s overweight and unhappy, and when her son Marcus, who has ADHD, takes revenge on a classmate by secretly peeing in her water bottle, Frances finds herself ostracised by all the yummy…
The Long Road from Paris
Written by Kirby Williams — This is Kirby Williams’s second thriller featuring New Orleans jazz prodigy Urby Brown, an expat living in Paris even as the dark clouds of Naziism spread over Europe. Author Williams, an expat himself, effectively conveys his love of the city…
Village of the Lost Girls
Written by Agustin Martínez, translated by Frank Wynne — This missing persons thriller, with its twists racing through the hairpin bends of the Pyrenees, is a debut novel by one of Spain’s most prolific crime screenwriters, and it shows. Its opening, when schoolgirls Lucia and Ana…
The Flower Girls
Written by Alice Clark-Platts — With children who kill as its main focus, The Flower Girls by Alice Clark-Platts has ‘controversy’ written all over it. Some will find it a difficult book to read. There are parallels to real-life cases such as the two youngsters…