Stay away from the neighbours!

PSYCHOS

FINDERS, KEEPERS by Sabine Durrant (Hodder £14.99, 320 pp)

VERITY BAXTER is a lonely lexicographer and we are treated to a new word with its definition at the start of each chapter. My favourite was Chapter Three’s Sialoquent — adjective. It means tending to spray saliva when speaking, particularly useful to learn in a respiratory pandemic.

Verity’s lonely life is transformed when Alisa Tilson and her smart young family move in next door.

These oddly matched women soon discover they are useful to each other in different ways. But the secrets they are both running away from gradually and tragically shatter that co-dependency.

This well-paced, intelligent mystery benefits from finelydrawn characters and convincing psychological tension. Durrant explores the vicious extremes of female behaviour and asks us to take a peek at the raging traumas behind the calm masks of suburban respectability.

THE OTHER PASSENGER by Louise Candlish (S&S, £14.99, 416 pp)

AFTER the phenomenal success of Our House,

Candlish’s new book is bound to be a bit of an event. This plot is very different, but Candlish’s talent for youngish characters beset by contemporary sins is intact.

Jamie is a rather self-satisfied 40-something, married to the well-off Clare.

He commutes to work on a Thames boat, usually accompanied by his younger and poorer friend Kit, who is married to the stunning Melia.

The two couples are friends, but things get dodgy when Kit disappears and the police suspect Jamie of being involved. Although there is a solid mystery that is satisfactorily resolved, Candlish is at her best when observing the toxic tensions between generations and the issues between people from different income groups. Overall, it’s another winner.

A KNOCK AT THE DOOR by T.W. Ellis (Sphere £18.99, 384pp)

JEN is a rather irritating yoga teacher with anxiety issues, but she suddenly becomes very interesting when two FBI agents knock on the door and announce that her husband isn’t who she thinks he is. They suspect his wine company is being used as a moneylaundering operation and that she is now in danger.

The highly original and very twisty plot really comes into its own when we meet Rusty, the local marijuana-smoking female police chief, and we are successfully kept guessing until the final pages.

There is a laid-back confidence about Ellis’s writing that is very seductive, and he is unusually good at writing female characters.

This is his first psychological thriller and it’s a cracker.