Alex Marwood

From Amazon:

Alex 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? Everyone who lives at 23 Beulah Grove has a secret. If they didn't, they wouldn't be renting rooms in a dodgy old 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, show more 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.

My Thoughts:

From the very beginning Alex Marwood hooks you. Cher, teenage runaway, is interviewed at the police station, giving her statement about a recent gruesome discovery – then we are thrown back in time to start meeting the people involved…the residents of No 23. Knowing that doom is approaching for at least one, you just want to shout. “Stop!"...“Don’t do that”. “RUN!" …and yet you are never entirely sure whether you are directing this at the right people... very clever.

Putting that side of it away for a moment – the more frightening part if you like – you can also look at this story as a soundbite from life. Cher, teenager, thief, but also someone you would want on your side. Collette, hiding from danger not realising that she faces far worse in her chosen sanctuary, Vesta, pensioner, is mother and confidante to all. Then you have a handome asylum seeker Hossein, the lonely Thomas and the musically minded Gerard, all watched over by the repugnant landlord Preece. Different views, different lives, all tied together by their mutual living space, you could easily read this as a cautionary tale of the ups and downs of life…and somewhere in that marvelous mix a killer lurks…hiding in plain sight. From start to finish this is a terrific page turner, a look at the dark heart that lurks in us all and a compelling, often emotional, always refreshing tale of humanity. show less

Alex Marwood’s gristly thriller The Killer Next Door holds back no punches when it comes to the grimier, slimier aspects of humanity. A group of residents in South London rent rooms from “The Landlord,” a portly man who has no qualms about invading personal space. The residents – Vesta, Hossein, Collette, Cher, Thomas, and Gerard – all have their quirks, of course, but the most interesting have to be Thomas, Collette, and Cher.

Thomas is referred to as “The Lover,” a quiet, show more pensive man who also happens to be a serial killer. The pungent odors from his hobby of mummifying the women he “loves” permeate through the old house, but the residents dismiss it as odd, but not alarming. Thomas presents one side to the world: a hard-working, sensitive guy who is eager to help his neighbors. Inside of his apartment, however, he engages in some rather distasteful habits – let’s just say those habits regularly clog up the drains. Marwood does not shy away from vivid descriptions of Thomas’s diversions; for instance: “Jecca left the house in a series of carrier bags, flesh falling from bone like a five-hour pot roast…Katrina, her body cavities cleared more studiously, was a steep learning curve. His incision, down the front of the abdomen the way a pathologist would do it, left the trunk loose and floppy, and her nose was ruined by his clumsy attempts to remove the brain with the crochet hook. The parichistic entry, via a slit in the left-hand side, though it means having to plunge himself arm-deep in viscera, produces a neater, more human-shaped final product” (93).

Collette, also known as Lisa, is on the run from her former boss after she accidentally witnesses a horrifying incident. Three years and a duffel bag of money later, she stumbles upon 23 Beulah Grove. Collette only wants to keep a quiet profile and visit her mother in the nursing home periodically; unwittingly, she is drawn into a series of crimes and intrigues far beyond her imagination.

Cher drinks, smokes, and steals; her days pass by in a yellow haze of fear, hunger, and longing. She is only fifteen years old and is determined not to return to the foster home, even if it means robbing men much larger and stronger than her. Her heart, though, is pure, and she forms an unlikely friendship with Collette and Vesta.

When a culminating event brings the residents together, they learn more than they bargained for about some of their neighbors. Marwood is a master at sketching out characters, then filling them in subtly with unique details. If you can handle a bit of gristle and fat, then definitely dive into this contemporary thriller fiction.

My only qualm is that there is a plethora of British terms throughout the novel – of course, that makes sense since the novel is set in London. At times it was distracting and frustrating to not know what certain terms meant in context…but that is my own failing, not Marwood’s.

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This has a dreadful, dreadful cover, but was actually one of my favourite reads of the year: the sins of the parents are visited upon the daughters of a sainted Princess Di-type figure and of a Nobel Prize-winning polymath, who fail to live up to their mothers' perfection, but succeed in making lives of their own – albeit working as waitresses at a kinky school dinners restaurant. Featuring Henry, one of the most delightful felines ever presented in fiction. (I had to read the end of the show more book first, to make sure nothing bad happened to Henry. It doesn't.) show less

From Amazon:

On a fateful summer morning in 1986, two eleven-year-old girls meet for the first time. By the end of the day, they will both be charged with murder. Twenty-five years later, journalist Kirsty Lindsay is reporting on a series of sickening attacks on young female tourists in a seaside vacation town when her investigation leads her to interview carnival cleaner Amber Gordon. For Kirsty and Amber, it’s the first time they've seen each other since that dark day so many years ago. show more Now with new, vastly different lives—and unknowing families to protect—will they really be able to keep their wicked secret hidden?

My Thoughts:

The story was really well constructed and I liked the way the story jumped between the present day and the past. The story of the two women as young girls and how the events unfold that terrible day are done slowly. The layers are peeled back as at the same time the reader sees what is happening in their lives currently. It seems like these two women have no chance to redeem themselves as once again their lives clash in the worst possible way. The subject matter of children that kill children may be hard for some to deal with but Alex Marwood tackles the subject masterfully. show less