Killer thrillers

My Other Husband ***** by Dorothy Koomson (Headline Review, £16.99)

Cleo Forsum is a successful author and the TV adaptation of her novels about a crime-solving baker is a huge hit.

So why is Cleo sabotaging her own career by cancelling the series? Why is she divorcing the husband she loves? And why has she been arrested for murder?

Dorothy Koomson is the queen of the killer hook line and master of the jaw-dropping twist. As the reader learns more about Cleo in the present day, we also wind back 25 years to her university days when the carefree student was hanging out with her best friend, Trina, and rejecting the advances of the geeky Heath.

But, over time, Cleo falls for Heath.

At first, the couple are deliriously happy together – but Heath is not what he seems. He grows increasingly jealous and paranoid and as his behaviour spins out of control Cleo discovers he is more dangerous than she could ever have imagined.

A few years after the relationship ends, Cleo starts to build a new life for herself with her second husband, Wallace. But her new-found happiness proves short lived.

She is horrified to realise that Heath is back, watching her every move and doing his best to harm the people who mean the most to her.

With a cast of strong, memorable characters, this is a thrilling and complex tale of long-kept secrets and dangerous obsession, simmering with suspense.

Anne Cater

Seventeen **** by John Brownlow (Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99)

For the past 100 years, governments all over the world have used a clandestine service to commission the world’s best assassin to take out dictators, warlords and crime bosses. Each assassin is known by a number and they are only at the pinnacle of their profession until a pretender to the throne takes them down. The current elite killer is Seventeen.

But he did not have to “beat the best to be the best” because his predecessor, Sixteen, walked away and went off grid while still in his prime.

Then a client commissions Seventeen to track Sixteen down – and kill him.

This launches the two assassins into a high-stakes game of cat and mouse where they must decide who their real enemy is. Each other? Or the shadowy forces pulling the strings through their handler?

Seventeen is a gripping debut thriller from a Britishcanadian screenwriter and it keeps readers on the edge of their seats through a roller-coaster ride of high-octane action that builds to an explosive finale.

Its short and snappy chapters add to the fast pace. It also reads like a screenplay, so it’s no surprise that the author, who wrote the film, Sylvia, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig, has already landed a major movie deal for Seventeen.