Would you want to know your death day? The best Psychological Thrillers out now – My
My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeney (Macmillan £16.99, 320pp)
The very creepy context for this gripping thriller involves a house in a Cornish village and two women who appear to have a weird connection with each other.
One of them, artist Eden Fox, returns to the house after her morning run only to discover her key no longer fits the door and another woman who looks like her is living there.
The other woman, Birdy, has recently had a terrible health diagnosis.
Suddenly nothing makes sense in Eden’s life, with both her husband and daughter apparently disowning her.
What follows is a desperate, sometimes chaotic story that is brilliantly unravelled and begs the question: ‘Everyone knows their birthday. If you could know your death day, would you want to?’
The key to a tangled web of deception
The Opposite of Murder by Sophie Hannah (Hodder & Stoughton £22, 368pp)
This clever author is well known for her unreliable narrators. Once again she has come up with an engrossing tale.
Jemma confesses to the murder of her stepmother, but then we discover the stepmother has actually been killed while she is confessing to the police. Jemma seems to think she has saved herself from actually committing the murder but she is being too clever by half.
Part of Hannah’s trademark storytelling relies on well-developed secondary characters. And here we have a husband, an ex-boyfriend and a detective each with their own secrets. As we learn more of Jemma’s childhood trauma there are more questions than answers about who is manipulating whom – and why.
Witty and unpredictable.
Troublemaker by Lesley Kara (Penguin £9.99, 384pp)
Storm has never recovered from the death of her brother who was murdered in a violent mugging.
The psychological effects have left her prone to panic and over-reaction. So when she witnesses a murder which bears marked similarities to her brother’s death, the police are not inclined to believe her, particularly because there is no body.
But the murder is just the start of a reign of terror by her tormentor, who wants to shut her up for good. It’s not until she strikes up a friendship with Lena, a neighbour and ex-police officer, that she finally has hope.
But it’s not a straight road for Storm and the reader faces unsettling facts about the suffering relatives of victims endure.
Tense and thoughtful.