Closest friend, lethal enemy

CRIME

Karen Perry Michael Joseph €15.00

KAREN Perry started life as a collaboration between Irish writers Karen Gillece and Paul Perry. The pair were old friends with established writing careers and, over a drink one evening, decided to create a joint venture under the pseudonym Karen Perry. They wrote four novels together, selling 250,000 copies across Ireland and the UK. Recently, they decided it was time to pursue their own writing projects and Your Closest Friend is the first Karen Perry title with Karen as the solo author.

The book focuses on two women who get caught up in a terrorist attack in London. Cara is blindly trying to get away from the chaos when a total stranger pulls her to safety. They take refuge in a windowless room above a sandwich shop and, while waiting for the horror outside to disperse, Cara tells Amy, a young American woman, intimate details about her personal life. Amy listens intently as Cara unburdens herself of secrets she has never told anyone — not even her husband. The pair later escape unharmed, say goodbye and go their separate ways.

But, as Cara tries to deal with the trauma of the terror attack, cracks start appearing in her marriage and her career. When she starts receiving anonymous threats, she is at her wits’ end and doesn’t know who to turn to. As she is trying to figure out how to regain control of her life, Amy reappears like a guardian angel. Cara gratefully accepts Amy’s offer to help her out, not realising that the biggest threat she will ever face is this stranger she has invited into her life and her home.

Gillece has a significant amount of writing experience and it really shows in this her ninth novel. Alternating between the points of view of Cara and Amy, Your Closest Friend is a tightly-paced rocket ride that delivers a brilliant portrait of one woman driven to the edge by another woman’s utter obsession. It reminds us that old secrets can bubble away in the background just waiting for the right time to reappear and destroy lives. If you’re a fan of menacing psychological thrillers that chill to the bone, this book is for you.