Who is spying on pretty Polly?
SUNBURN by Laura Lippman (Faber £14.99)
THE blurb on this book sells it as a sort of lovechild of literary novelist Anne Tyler and thriller writer James M. Cain.
And for once the blurb doesn’t over-promise. Lippman writes the best opening pages of any thriller so far this year.
An unknown male narrator sits in a bar, his eyes focused on the sunburnt shoulder of a redhead called Polly. He is being paid to watch her.
Polly is a mother who has walked out on her family and is on the run.
Seedy American motels and cheap bars give this book a wonderful film noir flavour. Lippman’s slinky, sly prose wraps itself around a deliciously concealed mystery. Not least because she manages to keep us guessing — and caring — about whether Polly is a victim or a perpetrator.
LET ME LIE by Clare Mackintosh (Sphere £12.99)
FANS of I Let You Go might be a tad disappointed by Mackintosh’s latest offering.
This book is more concerned with the psychological unravelling of her characters than the straightforward suspense her readers are used to.
The central character, Anna, is a young mother trying to recover from the suicide of her parents, but who becomes convinced they were actually murdered.
Her search to find their killers uncovers more uncomfortable truths than she can cope with. One of them might still be alive . . .
The most powerful parts of the book concern the contradictions and turmoil caused by grief, and Mackintosh is good at creating sympathetic characters. But there were just a few too many twists in the plot to make this as good as her previous bestsellers.
WHILE YOU SLEEP by Stephanie Merritt (HarperCollins £12.99)
THE ingredients are traditional — a haunted house on a remote Scottish island is rented by a young woman running away from a secret disturbing experience.
But from the beginning, we are encouraged to believe Zoe Adams might be running towards even more danger. And what has the death, over a century ago, of a young widow and her son to do with Zoe’s new turmoil?
Merritt’s clever insight into the effects of psychological trauma has produced a contemporary, edgy and, at times, terrifying tale.
She convincingly conjures up the underlying menace of a remote landscape and a secretive, tight- knit community and tackles the themes of mental illness and the nature of different people’s realities with compassionate intelligence.