I’m using ‘literary thriller’ to suggest page-turning suspense rather than the breathless, action-packed pace often associated with the genre. All five have links to longer reviews on the blog.
The glossy vibrant Swinging Sixties was all Carnaby Street, mini-skirts, coffee bars and rock n’ roll, or at least that’s what nostalgic TV documentaries would have us believe. Jo Bloom’s Ridley Road flips that coin to reveal something nasty – racism and fascism alive and kicking almost two decades after the war ended. Inspired by a conversation heard between her father and an old political activist friend, Bloom’s novel follows twenty-year-old Vivien who leaves Manchester, heading south in search of the man she knows as Jack Fox, a writer who spent time closeted with her father just before he died. What follows is an exploration of a fascinating slice of British history all wrapped up in a thriller and a love story.
Leo Vardiashvili takes his narrator back to Georgia in Hard By a Great Forest, the country Saba left with his father and
brother in 1992, aged eight, leaving his mother behind. Eighteen years later, his father has returned followed by his brother, both now missing. When Saba arrives, his passport is confiscated. Dazed, with nowhere to stay, he’s rescued by a cab driver who spots an opportunity. As Saba and Nodar take off on a dangerous journey leading them over the closed border into breakaway Ossetia, the narrative gains the pace of a thriller and the humour of the opening chapters drops away. Vardiashvili spins a good story, laying bare the fallout of the Soviet Union and its effects on ordinary people – the horrors of civil war, the loss of family, the sacrifices made – while offering the prospect of hope.
Set in an Irish seaside town, Colin Walsh’s Kala sees three schoolfriends reunited just before the remains of one of their group are unearthed at a building site fifteen years after her disappearance. Joe’s back in Kinlough having achieved fame but not happiness. Helen is home from Canada for her father’s wedding, apparently successful as a crusading freelance journalist. Mush has never left, still working in his mother’s café. Well-practiced at being the new girl, Helen had found herself taken up by Kala and Aoife when she moved to Kinlough. For a year or so, the group was inseparable but when Kala disappeared, they drifted apart. Walsh elegantly unfolds this story of secrets and lies, leading us to a satisfying denouement after a slow build of suspense.
I’m wary of saying too much about Scarlett Thomas’sThe Sleepwalkers which follows a newly married couple who’ve been
booked into a hotel on a small Greek Island as a wedding present, the only guests at the end of the season. A revelation at their wedding has made them both feel their relationship is doomed, worsened by the discovery that a couple drowned recently, one attempting to save the other who sleepwalked into the sea. When two other guests turn up, interested in turning the sleepwalkers’ story into a movie, things take a decidedly odd turn. Evie is a particularly pleasing unreliable narrator. Her letters make up the bulk of the story, small bombshells let off as she tries to piece together what happened to the sleepwalkers and why, while telling her own story. I thoroughly enjoyed this clever, smartly constructed novel, its tension kept taut right up to the end.
Hard to resist a thriller set in the book world, particularly when the author is an ex-bookseller. Alice Slater’s Death of a Booksellertook me so vividly back to my own bookselling days I felt I’d been restocking the shelves only yesterday. Set during the run up to Christmas, her hugely enjoyable novel follows Roach, who’s worked in the dingy Walthamstow branch of Spines for nine years, and Laura, one of three seasoned booksellers parachuted in with the aim of saving it from closure, on whom Roach becomes fixated, convinced she’s hiding something. Slater alternates Roach’s and Laura’s narratives, Roach’s obsessive behaviour providing much of the tension as Laura’s careful control begins to crumble.
Any page-turners you’d like to suggest?
If you’d like to explore more posts like this, you can find them here.
Set in an Irish seaside town, Colin Walsh’s Kala sees three schoolfriends reunited just before the remains of one of their group are unearthed at a building site fifteen years after her disappearance. Joe’s back in Kinlough having achieved fame but not happiness. Helen is home from Canada for her father’s wedding, apparently successful as a crusading freelance journalist. Mush has never left, still working in his mother’s café. Well-practiced at being the new girl, Helen had found herself taken up by Kala and Aoife when she moved to Kinlough. For a year or so, the group was inseparable but when Kala disappeared, they drifted apart. Walsh elegantly unfolds this story of secrets and lies, leading us to a satisfying denouement after a slow build of suspense.
Hard to resist a thriller set in the book world, particularly when the author is an ex-bookseller. Alice Slater’s Death of a Bookseller took me so vividly back to my own bookselling days I felt I’d been restocking the shelves only yesterday. Set during the run up to Christmas, her hugely enjoyable novel follows Roach, who’s worked in the dingy Walthamstow branch of Spines for nine years, and Laura, one of three seasoned booksellers parachuted in with the aim of saving it from closure, on whom Roach becomes fixated, convinced she’s hiding something. Slater alternates Roach’s and Laura’s narratives, Roach’s obsessive behaviour providing much of the tension as Laura’s careful control begins to crumble.