The best recent thrillers – review roundup
Three-Fifths
John Vercher
Pushkin Vertigo, £12.99, pp256
In 1995 Pittsburgh, 22-year-old Bobby Saraceno’s best friend, Aaron, has just got out of prison. But he’s not the Aaron that Bobby remembers from three years earlier – a skinny comic-book nerd. Aaron has returned from prison a white supremacist, and one of his very first actions is to brutally smash a young black man in the face with a brick. Bobby watches, horrified, disgusted – and then drives Aaron away. Three-Fifths is inspired by Vercher’s own experiences as a student in Pittsburgh. It explores the turmoil that is Bobby’s inner life – he is mixed race, passing as white, and even Aaron, racist, violent and utterly miserable, doesn’t know the truth about his friend. “Each time Bobby glanced at Aaron he tried to picture the boy he knew before he got locked up, hoped every blink would bring him out of some fever dream, sweating under the comforter, huddled up on his couch, but all he saw was that black kid’s face smashed to hell and his stomach turned.” Shortlisted for prestigious American crime prize the Edgar best first novel award, this is short, lucid and harrowing, as Bobby, terrified about his complicity in Aaron’s crime, spirals closer to disaster.
The Devil and the Dark Water
Stuart Turton
Raven Books, £16.99, pp576
Stuart Turton’s mind-bending debut, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, in which Evelyn is murdered repeatedly at a party, won him the Costa first novel award. His second, The Devil and the Dark Water, is just as ambitious a prospect. This time Turton has set his story in 1634, when the great detective Samuel Pipps is being transported in chains (he may or may not be innocent of an as-yet-unspecified crime) from the Dutch East Indies to Amsterdam. It’s a dangerous journey, as the captain of the Saardam warns: “Pirates will stalk us, storms will lash us and this damn restless sea will try to deliver us into the rocks.” Before they even leave, a leper informs passengers that “the Saardam’s cargo is sin and all who board her will be brought to merciless ruin. She will not reach Amsterdam.” He then bursts into flames.
Once the Saardam is at sea, strange symbols start appearing, whispers are heard through the crowded decks, the livestock are slaughtered, and then a man is murdered. “The Saardam is doomed,” says the captain. “We all know what’s been happening on this ship, what stalks us in the dark water.” Pipps’s bodyguard Arent Hayes investigates, with the help of his imprisoned master, and Turton has a fantastic time laying out the details of his intricate plot, leaving the reader wondering if it is something human or supernatural causing the devilry on the Saardam. Tons of swashbuckling fun.
Playdate
Alex Dahl
Head of Zeus, £18.99, pp464
In the quiet Norwegian town of Sandefjord, Elisa is delighted when her seven-year-old daughter, Lucia, is invited for a playdate with a new school friend. When it morphs into an impromptu sleepover, she isn’t sure – Lucia has never stayed the night with a friend before, but her daughter’s excitement convinces her. The next day, however, when her husband waits for Lucia to be dropped home, she doesn’t arrive. The number they call isn’t answered; the home where they left her turns out to be an Airbnb; the woman and her daughter aren’t registered at Lucia’s school. There are no leads; the police are mystified.
Alex Dahl’s Playdate moves between perspectives. There’s Elisa, desperately appealing for Lucia’s safe return: “I remember seeing other mothers – people like me, now – on television, in another life.” There’s her husband, Fredrik, who tells the police that “my wife and I are pretty much the most average small-town couple you can imagine. We’re every statistic – two kids, mortgage, full-time jobs, busy days”. There’s Selma, the hungry young journalist who’s covering the case, there’s Lucia herself – and there’s the woman who took her. Dahl plays with a scenario that is every parent’s nightmare as she slowly reveals the truth in this fast-paced and unsettling read.
The Sentinel
Lee and Andrew Child
Bantam Press, £20, pp384
Jack Reacher continues to wander the US, righting wrongs, in his latest outing . The difference this time round, though, is that this is the first Reacher novel written by Lee Child and his brother, Andrew, after Lee decided that, while he wanted to hang up his pen and retire, he wasn’t quite ready to let Reacher knock out his last baddie. In The Sentinel, Reacher arrives in a small town outside Nashville, which has been shut down by a cyber attack. The blame has landed on IT manager Rusty Rutherford, and as Reacher wanders around looking for a much-needed coffee, he sees Rusty about to be abducted and steps in to help. So begins a chase all over town as Reacher tries to work out what’s going on, a chase that leads to everything from cold war secrets to election sabotage, and takes in all sorts of punch-ups on the way. “You people are in no hurry to help him. Someone’s got to. I’m the one who’s here,” says Reacher, neatly summing up his raison d’etre. It’s great to be back in his company, in a world where the bad guys get what’s coming to them (and a schooling in grammar, too, if they’re lucky – as Reacher keeps saying: “I really dislike the imprecise use of language”). A smooth transition for a much-loved character.
• To order Three-Fifths, The Devil and the Dark Water, Playdate or The Sentinel go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15
