Tangerine

This debut novel owes much to Patricia Highsmith’s chilling The Talented Mr Ripley, except here the twisted protagonist is female. And while the plot revelations can be predictable, the delicious setting in Tangier in the 1950s is intoxicating. So much so that it’s already being made into a film with Scarlett Johansson and George Clooney. Alice and Lucy met at Bennington College in the US where they were roommates morphing into inseparable best friends. Both orphans, Alice is a posh Brit and Lucy a rather raw American, but their unlikely bond is frenetic. Then a mysterious accident comes between them and when

Lucy turns up unexpectedly on Alice’s doorstep in Morocco of all places, they haven’t spoken for a year. Alice, here with her hideous gold digger husband, isn’t enjoying life in Tangier and is scared to go out of the house. But Lucy is much braver and soon manages to reinsert herself into Alice’s life. So begins a smartly executed, tightly wound plot fuelled by dark obsession, manipulation and deception.