Blog Series

1. The Other People by C. J. Tudor
The reason I read psychological thriller novels is because I love to play detective. I love to try to work out what’s happened and basically ‘who dunnit’, as I’m sure everyone else who’s into these books loves to do as well. What is so sensational about ‘The Other People’ is that the author, C. J. Tudor, allows the reader to play detective in a seemingly effortless way. The ability to write an interesting crime story is one thing, but actually being able to make the reader part of the story themselves is another skill entirely. In this story we accompany the main protagonist Gabe on his journey to find his believed to be deceased daughter. It has been three years since Gabe saw his daughter being taken on the day of her and her mother’s (Gabe’s wife’s) supposed murder. Gabe’s world was shattered on that day and his only hope of attempting to fix some of those pieces back together is to find his daughter, that he knows is still alive. But with a girl’s dead body and a positive identification from the girl’s grandfather, the police have no intention of helping Gabe on his quest. He must go alone. There is hope however, as some assistance arrives from some unlikely places, such as from Katie, the woman who works in the services where Gabe frequents and the Samaritan who prevented Gabe from taking his own life a few years prior. These people are not Gabe’s friends nor his family, so why should they help him in finding his daughter, particularly when they are in so much danger themselves? Is it really a selfless act of kindness or are they mixed up in the mysterious story some way too? Also why should the grandfather positively identify his granddaughters body, when it clearly wasn’t hers? This story has so many interesting twists and turns, with more and more people becoming involved in the mystery as the story unfolds. This is not your basic ‘who dunnit’ story but more of a ‘what could be the reason for who dunnit’ kind of story. The author reveals tiny but valuable morsels of information in a carefully precise manner throughout, right up to the very last chapter, allowing the reader to piece together the events of three simultaneous stories that seem so disconnected at first. In doing so, the reader is given time to process all the information and work out motives for each character, allowing them to gain a web of connectivities, just like a DI would in the movies. Then, a sense of overwhelming satisfaction is felt by the reader as they reach a conclusion just a page or two before their theory is revealed to be correct by Gabe. In this novel, C. J. Tudor has very cleverly not only made the reader empathise heavily with Gabe but also become Gabe himself, as we receive, piece together and utilise new information just as he does. The only thing not revealed to the reader is why the strange events in Gabe’s daughter’s narcoleptic episodes occur. Here the reader is forced to use their imagination and come up with their own theories, without being given any logical possibilities. This book therefore also continues the mystery beyond the final page, leaving the reader gripped and contemplating what things go on in the incomprehensible land of dreams when we all fall asleep. Congratulations on this fabulous page turner. I can’t wait for the next novel coming out this year!

2. The Next Girl by Carla Kovach
One of the classic types of psychological thriller drama is a kidnapping. For anyone who has had children, or maybe even younger siblings, this is their worst nightmare. And the thing that makes this kind of story so easy to engage with is the fact that it could happen to you. It could easily happen to anyone. But what if the person who was taken away wasn’t your child or your younger sibling? What if that person was you? Suddenly those doors stopping you from empathising with a character are pulled wide open and you are thrown straight into a situation that you never thought you would have to deal with, left wondering: what would I do if it were me? Being taken is something most adults don’t usually even think about, let alone worry about. But the fact is that it could happen to anyone at anytime. Never before has a story forced me to look over my shoulder so many times whilst reading it. For me, The Next Girl, by Carla Kovach, made me look at the world in a slightly different way. It made me question everything and everyone and it gave me the ability to think deeper about what might be going on inside a person’s head. For me, any story that stays with you as much as this one does is certainly a successful one. In this story we follow the lives of Luke and Deborah. Deborah has a loving and devoted husband and young children who love their caring mummy very much. She has the perfect life and thinks about it all the time. Laying in her bed, she can hear the merry whistling of the tune ‘You are my sunshine’ from a couple of rooms away. Then reality kicks in. The happy thought of her perfect life is sucked swiftly from her mind and vomit starts to rise in her throat. The person whistling is not her husband, nor her child, but if she is to have any hope of seeing them again, she must continue to pretend. Through the searing pain below and gritted teeth, she manages a fake smile, and luckily, this time, her tears go unnoticed. Luke has not seen his wife, Deborah, in 4 years and is starting to lose hope. He desperately wants to move on for the sake of their children, but he can’t quite shift the niggling feeling that the wife he loves is still out there somewhere, with the desire to come home to him. Despite some people saying that she left him and that he has to move on, he won’t let this feeling go. After these 4 years of silence, without a trace of Deborah anywhere, a baby is found in a doorway in town. This baby is the first piece of evidence that Deborah is still alive and out there somewhere. It is her baby, and she somehow managed to get it there for someone to find as a signal for help. Now the police and Luke must start their investigation again, right at the beginning. Despite this glimmer of hope, every question from before still remains unanswered: what happened on the night of when she went missing? Who, if anyone, was involved in her disappearance? Why did no one see anything? And, most importantly, where is Deborah? But now the plot has thickened with even more questions to answer: where did her baby come from? How did she get it there? Why would she take her baby there rather than coming home? In this book, the reader is kept at the very edge of their seat as they observe two sides of the same story, from Deborah’s enclosed perspective, where tiny slithers of information are given from the subtleties that her senses struggle to pick up, and from the outside perspective of Luke and the police, where everything is a blank slate. It is apparent that every place where there was a vast lack of clues before, are the only places that could possibly provide any clues to solving this mystery. The reader follows all these characters in their fight for the truth in this gripping and exciting story, with new twists and turns around every corner and new motives being uncovered bit by bit. As well as experiencing this engaging crime drama plot, the reader is also made to contemplate the psychological effects of obsession and the actions that it has the power to make someone carry out. The reader is left captivated by this thought and questioning what things are going on in other people’s heads, particularly in those people who we know and who we see everyday. We are even left wondering: what lengths would I go to in order to feed my life-consuming obsession?

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3. The Girl Before by JP Delaney

As a biologist, I have always been obsessed with David Attenborough TV shows, ever since I was two years old. One of the creatures that fascinated me the most, was the shark. Sharks are very ancient animals and have remained pretty much the same for millions of years. Why? Because they are so successful. Life always takes the easiest route, and if there is no environmental pressure to drive change, then it won't. Despite them being extraordinary creatures, I was always a bit scared of sharks, as I am sure a lot of people are. But I soon learnt that, when in the water, its not the shark you can see that you need to be afraid of, its the one you can't see that you need to worry about. The one hiding in the murky waters right under your nose, just waiting for the perfect moment when your guard is down to pounce. The story of 'The Girl Before' by JP Delaney gives the reader the same uneasy feeling as floating in those murky waters would. You are aware of potential danger close by, but maybe that was not what you needed to worry about. Maybe there is something far worse much closer, hiding in plain sight. In this story we follow the parallel tales of Jane and Emma. These women are very similar, both have the same coloured hair, the same build, the same men in their life and both have a dark secret that haunts them constantly, cruelly holding them back when they try to move on. As well as this, both are living in the same house; an extreme minimalistic home, with a slightly eerie atmosphere intertwined in its beautiful features. Both women went there for a fresh start, a chance to escape the cage of their past, but both also sense that the house itself might also be haunted by a dark secret. There is one significant difference between these two women though; one of them is dead. We learn about her story from beyond the grave, just as the other woman learns it too. This new woman, our main protagonist, now fears for her own life too, as if learning about the girl before is a premonition of her own future. Soon, the home that she thought was her escape from her own past appears to be sealing in her fate. As the reader, you are forced to ask yourself the questions that the main protagonist keeps asking herself throughout; why me? what could this other girl and myself also have in common that could lead me into the same fate that she faced? In order to work out what is happening in this very strange situation, the reader must find the answers to these questions, just as she does. The author, JP Delaney, very subtly drip-feeds the answers to these questions to the reader, by gradually shedding light on key elements from the mystery of the girl before's death, just as the exact same series of events appears to happen to this new girl. The reader is poised at the edge of their seat, willing for her to realise the truth the split second after they have had the epiphany themselves. But will she? What is most clever about this story is the way it takes advantage of the reader's own cognitive processes. JP Delaney clearly has a very good understanding of the human mind and plays into this very well. The reader is left with a better understanding of their own psyche and a realisation of how, if you really want to believe something to have happened, or for someone to be guilty, then you yourself will twist every piece of evidence to fit your theory, even if nothing actually confirms it. It is this same phenomenon that makes rumours or 'Chinese Whispers' so problematic, and also why what you perceived to be imminently dangerous may not necessarily be what you needed to be afraid of.

4. The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell

​In most mystery stories, the past events are know. Well, by most people at least. And those who don’t know them can easily find them out from other people, to piece together the story and get a clear, holistic idea of what happened. But what if you have absolutely no idea about what happened in past events and what if you have absolutely no leads of potential people to give you information? But even worse, what if you’re not the detective just trying to solve a case unrelated to you? What if you need to know the past just to discover who you are yourself? We always take the past for granted and tell ourselves to forget about it and move to the future. But actually a sense of belonging, and knowing who our family are, is really crucial for humans, so that we feel safe, secure and supported. Sometimes you can’t move to the future if you never knew where your starting point in life was, or who else might be out there that has a strong connection to you. In this story we follow the journey of Libby, a young woman who’s life, apart from being adopted when she was a baby, has been relatively normal, until now that she discovers she has inherited a fortune in the form of a huge London Town house, left to her by her birth family. Until the age of 25, she had no idea that this house and fortune existed and now she finally has a chance of uncovering just who and where her original family might be. No one knows anything about the people who last lived in the house, so Libby must use clues from the house itself to help her. The house has not been touched since it was abandoned 25 years prior to now and its walls hold all the dark secrets of the people who lived there. Strange garments and other obscure things left behind, give Libby a starting point to go from and they reveal that some extremely hostile, inhumane and outright bazaar events occurred in that house. She must continue to investigate further though, if she is ever going to find her original family members, even if it means putting herself in danger to do so. The author, Lisa Jewell, doesn’t just show us the story from the past unravelling from Libby’s perspective, but also from the perspective of Henry, a boy from the past, who lived in the mysterious house. From him, we learn about how the lives of a pretty standard family got turned completely upside down gradually over the course of a few years, and then eventually went completely to ruin. It all began when his parents started having money troubles and decided that the solution was to allow another family to stay with them for a while. Henry and his sister were forced to adapt to this new way of living, forever hoping that the money troubles would melt away and this other family would soon vanish from their lives forever. But as time goes on, Henry soon realised that this family, consisting of a boy around Henry’s age, his father and his mother, were there to stay. And, not only were they there to stay, but the father intended to make significant changes to the way Henry’s own family was living and to make himself the ruler of the whole household. These changes eventually lead to horrific acts being imposed by him upon the children and women of the household, including various punishments, rape and severe manipulation. Henry’s parents were so sucked into this new cultish way of life that he couldn’t depend on them to get him and his sister away from this terrible life. The children soon had to fend, and fight, for themselves. This story is so cleverly written, that the reader experiences these significant changes to Henry’s way of life just as he does and we even feel his own impending sense of doom when he realises the gravity of the situation that he has to live in. We empathise with him as his normal life slowly turns into a fight for survival and we fight alongside him as he struggles to get himself and his little sister out of this terrible situation. With Henry’s tale of the past unfolding and Libby’s quest for the truth using clues left in the house 25 years ago, the reader is able to piece together what happened after the abandonment of the house, where the family members are now and their relation to Libby. The readers main questions, such as ‘why was the house abandoned? What happened in the house on the night of the abandonment? Did the children manage to escape? If so, where are the children now and how have they been living for the past 25 years and, most interestingly, what is their relation to Libby (who was just a baby at the time)?’, are all answered by the reader themselves as they put 2 and 2 together with information from the past and new findings from the present. The author is very successful at completely sucking the reader into the lives, past and present, of these characters and, also, at making the reader appreciate how fragile life really is and just how drastically it can change when we become heavily influenced by strong authoritative figures. When you are exposed to strong opinions 24/7, you yourself may start to doubt your principles and change your way of life accordingly, but these changes may certainly not be for the better.