Slaughter… spotted from the sky
THRILLERS
DEAD WOMAN WALKING by Sharon Bolton
(Bantam £12.99) TWO years ago, I enthused about Bolton’s last standalone thriller Little Black Lies, set in the Falkland Islands. I am delighted to report that she has lost none of her touch with her latest book.
It is about a young woman, Jessica Lane, who witnesses a murder from a hot air balloon over the Northumberland wilderness, only for the balloon to crash, killing her 11 companions and leaving her at risk from the murderer who has seen her face.
Bolton never lets the tension drop. Indeed it is her ability to convey creeping dread that marks out her exceptional talent as a story-teller.
She stunningly evokes Lane’s capacity for survival against all the odds and it is matched in vividness by her gripping portrait of a gipsy family headed by an evil matriarch who is intent on her destruction.
For once, the description ‘impossible to put down’ is fully merited, for this is an absolute page-turner.
A TRAITOR IN THE FAMILY by Nicholas Searle
(Viking £14.99) THIS richly nuanced thriller defines the life and times of Francis O’Neill, a Provisional IRA hitman between 1989 and 2005, and the impact his killings have on his family.
It is a moving characterisation of a man who starts out firmly believing what he is doing is right, even though it is patently wrong. But his moral compass gradually transforms as the number of murders increase.
In its subtlety it reminded me strongly of John le Carre’s wonderful A Small Town In Germany, which also brought home the delicate confusions that lie at the heart of those who work in the shadow of treachery. This is high praise.
O’Neill’s wife Bridget is a particularly compelling portrait of a woman who asks no questions, but for whom murder is the ghost that haunts her every waking moment. Written by a man with a background in intelligence and security, it weaves a magical spell.
SWEETPEA by C.J. Skuse
(HQ £12.99) CRUDE, rude and certainly shocking, this darkly comic story, from an author who has previously written young adult novels, has the potential to become a cult classic.
A graphic portrayal of a young woman with an insatiable appetite for murder, it has already been compared to Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 American Psycho and the parallel is precise. On the surface, Rhiannon is the typical girl next door, with a job as an editorial assistant on a local newspaper, a boyfriend and a little dog.
In the past, however, she was the victim of a celebrated crime, which has left deep scars on her psyche, meaning that she prepares lists of people she wishes to kill with notes on how to get away with it.
Written in a tongue-incheek style, which seldom leaves much to the imagination, it tears along at a breakneck pace as the body count mounts.
Not for the faint-hearted or squeamish, the TV rights have been sold — but it won’t be on before the watershed.