The Killer Next Door
A Novel
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- ¥1,300
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- ¥1,300
Publisher Description
“The Killer Next Door is even better [than The Wicked Girls]. Scary as hell. Great characters.” —Stephen King
Winner of the Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel and nominated for the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original
Everyone who lives at 23 Beulah Grove has a secret. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be renting rooms in a sketchy South London building for cash—no credit check, no lease. It’s the kind of place you end up when you you’ve run out of other options. The six residents mostly keep to themselves, but one unbearably hot summer night, a terrible accident pushes them into an uneasy alliance. What they don’t know is that one of them is a killer. He’s already chosen his next victim, and he’ll do anything to protect his secret.
Alex Marwood’s debut novel The Wicked Girls earned her lavish praise from the likes of Elizabeth Haynes, Laura Lippman, and Erin Kelly and received the Edgar Award. Now, Marwood’s back with a brilliant, tightly paced thriller that will keep you up at night and make you ask yourself: just how well do you know your neighbors?
“Taut, assured and reminiscent of Ruth Rendell's psychological novels, Marwood's second book more than lives up to the promise shown in her splendid debut, The Wicked Girls.” —The Guardian
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of this engrossing standalone from Edgar-winner Marwood (The Wicked Girls), Det. Insp. Merri Cheyne from Scotland Yard questions a young woman, Cheryl Farrell, about the grisly find of human fingers in a freezer inside a rundown boarding house located in a London suburb. As Cheryl confirms, the prints from those fingers belong to a fellow lodger, Lisa Dunne, who witnessed a murder and whom the FBI was seeking to interview. Dunne is not the only victim. Body parts from multiple corpses have surfaced in and around the boarding house, which turns out to be a destination for people with dark and embarrassing pasts that they wish to conceal. Meanwhile, the tenants must contend with break-ins, strange smells, loud music, hidden video-recording equipment in the bathrooms, and pipes clogged with a mysterious substance. Events converge to unite the lodgers in a mutual conspiracy, building up to a well-plotted ending filled with unexpected surprises. Six-city author tour.
