Tag Archives: Creating Suspense

The Lie by CL Taylor

In The Lie, we meet Jane Hughes, a seeming do-gooder who works at an animal shelter and lives a relatively quiet life. But it seems that her past is about to catch up with her, because someone knows who she used to be, and why she has worked so hard to flee from her past. Five years ago, Jane went to Nepal with her three best friends–and only two of the came back. The other woman sold her story to the papers and dragged Jane…

Read More »

Where I Lost Her by T. Greenwood

My love for T. Greenwood has been well-documented in this blog, and I eagerly await every one of her new novels. Thankfully she’s prolific, and with Where I Lost Her, she adds a level of suspense and mystery to complicated family dynamics she so deftly creates for each book. Tess is in trouble. She drinks too much, and she’s just learned something awful about her husband, Jake. On a visit to her childhood friend, Effie (from Greenwood’s debut Breathing Water), Tess is drunk driving home…

Read More »

Cormoran Strike, Dungeons and Dragons, and Creepy ‘Eileen’

I’m utterly enthralled by Cormoran Strike, the private detective at the center of JK Rowling’s pseudonymous crime series. The third book, Career of Evil, finds Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott the target of a psychopath with a penchant for dismemberment–and Robin seems to be his target. Rowling (as Robert Galbraith) understands that she can’t just deliver an intricately plotted crime story, she also has to take the characters further on their journey. At the end of the book, I was so heavily invested in…

Read More »

Laura Lippman, Lauren Oliver, Lloyd Alexander + more

Oh, I have had so many disappointments lately when trying to read Important Books by Important Authors that I needed to spend my spring break immersed in good genre. And even though not every book I read was entirely successful, my plan worked–consider my palate cleansed and my love for reading restored. The best of them was Hush Hush by Laura Lippman. It’s “A Tess Monaghan Novel” which should put me off, because I generally do not like series fiction with a recurring character. For…

Read More »

The Disappeared by Roger Scruton

Synopsis: In a community in Yorkshire, a disparate group of individuals are brought together when two women go missing and a third seems to be under threat from Arab sex traffickers. Review: I had a really mixed reaction to The Disappeared. On the one hand, I found a certain satisfying level of suspense and intricacy in the plotting. But on the other hand, I couldn’t forgive the numerous plot contrivances that made the overall story implausible and a bit frustrating. Knowing that Scruton is a…

Read More »

The Book of You by Claire Kendal

Synopsis: After a night she can’t remember that left her with bruises on her thighs, Clarissa can’t shake Rafe, whose unrelenting attentions gain added menace when she starts noticing the parallels to a rape trial she’s attending as a juror. Review: The Book of You had some strong and memorable elements, particularly Claire’s emotional and physical isolation as a result of Rafe’s stalking. Unfortunately, the secondary characters remained largely flat on the page, never serving as much more than an unwitting Greek chorus to Claire’s…

Read More »

The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood

Synopsis: A series of murders in a resort town lead to the unexpected reunion of two women who have been sentenced never to see each other again after they murdered a child when they were only 11. Review: Heavenly Creatures is one of my favorite movies of all time, so I was keen to read The Wicked Girls after reading it compared with Peter Jackson’s thriller about two preteen girls who commit an unspeakable murder. The structure of The Wicked Girls is quite cleverly executed.…

Read More »

Room by Emma Donoghue

Synopsis: Jack has never left Room, where he has lived with his mother since the day he was born 5 years ago, but now it might be time for them to attempt an escape into a world that Jack can’t even imagine. Review: I’m late in the game reading Room, and I confess I resisted it for a long time because the quotes I read seemed just too precious. What finally piqued my curiosity was learning that the novel depicted extended breastfeeding from the child’s…

Read More »

Cartwheel by Jennifer DuBois

Synopsis: When exchange student Lily Hayes is accused of murdering her roommate in suburban Buenos Aires, her every move falls under scrutiny from her father and the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, and what seemed like childish impulsivity now appears sociopathic, even to those who loved her. Review: I devoured Cartwheel in almost on sitting. I haven’t been one to follow any of the high-profile cases the book is based on, such as Amanda Knox, but I find Lily Hayes to be the kind…

Read More »

The People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Parry

Synopsis: Subtitled: The True Story of a Young Woman [Lucie Blackman] Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo–and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up. Review: I have no idea what the title of The People Who Eat Darkness means, but that was the only thing I found unsatisfying about this riveting true crime read. Lucie Blackman was a British girl who went to Tokyo to pay off her debts working as a hostess, a paid entertainer to Japanese salarymen. She was not a prostitute or…

Read More »