Thrill-seeker

Reading a new thriller set in Dublin has Sophie White more than a bit unnerved but not, she suspects, in the way the author probably intended

I’ve never been much of a one for a thriller, so I surprised myself recently when I became completely engrossed in a book called The Other Side Of The Wall, written by Andrea Mara. The story centres around several characters living in south Co Dublin, and I am hooked.

The plot and the writing are excellent, but I have to say what actually has me ensnared is not the page-turning who’s-done-what element (though there is plenty of that), it’s really more the who’s-done-what-with-their-kitchenextension element that I’m addicted to.

It’s given me an idea for a new literary genre that I feel could potentially make me millions — aspirational homes lit. I recognise that it’s no ‘chick lit’ or ‘mid lit’ but I feel confident that there are others out there like me.

Perhaps you, too, struggle to enjoy the narrative of TV dramas, because you have a burning question about where the characters sourced their exceptional bathroom fixtures? When I watched the first Sex And The City movie, I couldn’t enjoy it, because all the way through I was plagued with anxiety about who was going to get the fabulous Fifth Avenue penthouse after Carrie and Mr Big split.

Similarly with Mara’s well-paced thriller, I am completely missing the point — which concerns sinister goings-on with new neighbours and a child missing in the locality — because I’m much too focused on what the sinister neighbours are planning to do with the fixer-upper that they’ve just bought.

Throughout the wider story arc (a stockbroker has been slain; there’s a suspicious brother), tantalising details are slipping through, revealing that they’re planning to do much of the modernisation required themselves.

The husband, Sam — who may be having an affair — plans to work on the electrics himself, which is filling me with dread. A dread that would be more appropriate to, say, the scene where you find out what’s happening to the child — while reading that passage, I was instead overcome with excitement at the potential for a water feature.

Another aspect of the book that’s deeply troubling me is the marriage between two of the main characters. It is so fraught with real-life details — petty arguments about who’s turn it is to stay home and mind a sick child or take care of bedtime duties — that I’m genuinely concerned the author has, perhaps, been spying on my own marriage.

For me, the realisation that we have become the typical bickering, harried couple with 2.4 kids and an obsession with the light-filled extension, is possibly the thing that scares me most about the whole damn book. Such depressing information needs a comforting remedy, like a plate of gnocchi.

“I’m much too focused on what the sinister neighbours are planning to do with the fixer-upper they just bought”