INTO THE WATER

Paula Hawkins Riverhead Books, $33

Nel’s body is found in a river in Northern England. The single mum isn’t the first. Earlier that summer, the corpse of a teenage girl was discovered in the water and a connection between the two emerges. For Jules, who’s now caring for her dead sister’s 15-year-old daughter, it dredges up buried memories. Movie rights to this psychological thriller have already been sold – no surprise given the success of its predecessor, The Girl on the

Train. Paula Hawkins’ prose has unstoppable urgency: she piles on the suspense, ruthlessly probing family secrets and exploring the slippery nature of remembered truth and false emotion. With this brooding novel, the writer appears to have struck gold again.