San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Thrillers that keep us guessing with twisty, turning plots
A body is left outside in the cold, life slowly leaving it.
But whose is it? How did the person die? And where, in fact, was the body left?
Andrea Bartz’s “The Herd” begins by following the recipe for a classic whodunit, but a backdrop that speaks to the modern Millennial woman makes this thriller feel fun and fresh.
Katie Bradley is a journalist who has returned to New York City following a year spent in Michigan taking care of her ailing mom. While she was away, her sister, Hana, helped a college friend, Eleanor Walsh, use the runaway success of Eleanor’s cosmetics company to launch a women’s coworking space called the Herd, emphasis on HER.
The clubhouse is complete with a beauty room, an exclusive clientele, a hunky IT guy and a focus on female mentorship. Katie is desperate for Eleanor to allow her to skip the extensive application process and secure a coveted membership to the Herd. Reeling from a book deal on a Michigan business gone awry, Katie believes focusing a new book on Eleanor, and the businesses she created, will provide her with the career boost she needs.
Katie, however, doesn’t quite have the courage to ask fiercely private Eleanor for permission, so she proceeds with keeping her research hidden from both Eleanor and Hana. Yet while Katie is championing the Herd, others are rooting for its downfall, as evidenced by a coordinated attack of vandalism across all Herd locations.
Desperate to keep the destruction out of the news, Eleanor turns to Hana as the Herd’s publicist, also letting Hana in on a secret: The Herd is about to be acquired and a major announcement is forthcoming. Yet on announcement day, Eleanor goes missing, leaving everyone around her scrambling to find out why.
Told from the alternating viewpoints of Katie and Hana, the sisters each look into Eleanor’s life, trying to determine whether she has decided to disappear, or something much worse. But as the girls start digging deeper into Eleanor’s past, they are forced to confront some ugly truths about their own histories — and each other.
With characters and settings pulled straight from Instagram,
Bartz has created a fastpaced look at friendship, family, ambition and what can happen when carefully built facades start to crumble.
As the girls start digging deeper into Eleanor’s past, they ... confront some ugly truths about their own histories.
Boston’s Old Devils Bookshop, the setting for Peter Swanson’s “Eight Perfect Murders,” is far from the glossy world of “The Herd,” but bookshop owner Malcom “Mal” Kershaw is faced with his own race against time and an engaging mystery to solve.
A dusty relic, Old Devils has a cult following thanks to the one specific genre it carries: mystery and crime fiction. While closing the shop one night, Mal is approached by FBI Agent Gwen Mulvey, who is investigating a series of murders she believes are based on Agatha Christie’s classic “The A.B.C. Murders.”
Agent Mulvey then brings up a blog post Mal wrote years earlier titled “Eight Perfect Murders.” The post includes a list of eight books that offer the most ingenious, clever murders that fiction has ever produced. Agent Mulvey believes someone is working his or her way through Mal’s list, so together they begin searching for random or accidental deaths that might match Mal’s recommendations.
However, when Mal learns that the death of a previous customer neatly fits the plot of Ira Levin’s 1978 tome, “Deathtrap,” he begins to wonder if the murderer’s ultimate purpose isn’t killing, but reaching Mal. When another person connected to Mal is found
dead, he worries not only about who in his life might be next, but also how long it will be before the FBI believes him to be the killer they are searching for.
“Eight Perfect Murders” is an everunfolding puzzle. A nuanced character, Mal frequently confides in the reader, showing that he knows more than he is letting the FBI believe. But what exactly does Mal know, and what might he be guilty of ? These questions will plague readers and follow them throughout the book.
“Eight Perfect Murders” is also a thriller made for bibliophiles, paying homage to authors like John D. MacDonald, Patricia Highsmith, James Cain and Donna Tartt (because
all good bibliophilic odes must include a Tartt reference) — writers with the ability to build suspense, create horror and leave us scratching our heads and wanting to leave the lights on.
While “The Herd” and “Eight Perfect Murders” offer wildly different plots and protagonists, both Bartz and Swanson have managed to create page turners with characters that carefully unfold, and twists that leave readers guessing until the very end. What else could we want from a good whodunit?
Erica Flint is a public relations professional and freelance writer based in New York. Her writing has appeared in Departures magazine, VanityFair.com and The Hill newspaper.