The Wych Elm by Tana French
Google cannot tell me whether this book is called The Wych Elm or The Witch Elm, but you get the point. Twentysomething Toby works as a PR-operative for an art gallery somewhere in Dublin. After a night out with friends his apartment is burglarised; Toby catches them in the act and is clobbered on the head with a heavy object. When he wakes up in hospital he is no longer the same. He has a limp, his face droops and he can no longer remember […]
The Good Girl by Mary Kubica
Oh boy, where to begin with this one. On a crisp autumn evening, art teacher Mia is kidnapped by Colin, a low level criminal. He is supposed to hand her over to a notorious gangster who plans on using Mia to demand ransom from her influential lawyer dad. But Colin knows the gangster, knows what’ll happen to Mia, and impulsively decides to take Mia away himself. He takes her to an abandoned cabin in the woods where they settle in for the winter. As Colin […]
Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Mountaineering is a strange hobby. It’s not one I partake in: too strenuous, too expensive, too risky. Nevertheless I’m intrigued by it. I must have read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air at least three times. He does a good job of portraying the appeal of the sport, but illustrates the dangers and risks too – risks to himself, but to others as well. So does Olde Heuvelt’s Echo, except that it adds a twist to the familiar story. It’s easy to see where he […]
Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine
On a sunny eve, somewhere in the suburbs of Wichita, Gina Royal comes home with her two young children to find a car embedded into her house. But that’s not the biggest problem. The real problem is that the car has destroyed the garage wall, and when the cops take Gina into the garage – her husband’s hobby domain – she finds a dead woman suspended from the roof of the garage. The woman has been tortured to death. The culprit? Gina’s loving husband Melvin, […]
Every Last Lie by Mary Kubica
Clara Solberg’s infant son is only four days old when the police come to her door to tell her that her husband Nick and her daughter Maisie have in a serious car accident. Maisie is unharmed but Nick soon dies, leaving Clara alone with two young children and no income. To make matters worse, Maisie keeps having nightmares about being chased off the road by a ‘bad man’. Clara initially chalks it up to trauma and Maisie being a four year old, but soon other […]
Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
After a long day at work, university lecturer Stefan de Graaf returns to his home in the sleepy Dutch town of Beek, kisses his wife and sits down at the kitchen table. The wife tells him Grandma K has come to visit. They laugh and talk about their day. In a corner of the living room stands a silent woman, dressed in rags and chains, smelling of decay. Her eyes and mouth have been sewn shut. The wife has hung a dish towel over the […]
