The Girls Before by Kate Alice Marshall

 

Audrey works as a school counsellor in the town of Franklin, as well as volunteering with the local Search and Rescue Service. She is strongly motivated to help find missing people because years ago, when they were teenagers, her best friend, Janie, disappeared. 

The SAR team think of Audrey as some kind of lucky charm because she often gets a strong feeling that they are in the right place to start looking, and she is usually right. When as part of a search she and Len, her police deputy friend, wander on to private land owned by the Hills, Franklin’s most  prominent family, Audrey’s intuition kicks in and she knows there is something there that she needs to know more about. She knew the Hills siblings when they were all teenagers and decides to reacquaint herself with them.

As well as all the twists and turns of this suspenseful plot, there is lots of psychological insight into the main characters, and also a local legend about a witch called Jenny Red Hands who exacts vengeance on men who have harmed women and whose hands are blood-stained.

This is a good psychological thriller, and Audrey is a nicely complex heroine. I’m hoping there may be further books about her.

Published by Pan Macmillan

With Friends Like You by Amy Chozick

 Emily lives in New York with her husband, Roman, and their baby  boy. Roman is an Australian who ticks all the boxes in the Australian ditty: ‘Football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars”, although Holden in this case is the baby’s name, and the baby has a collection of soft toys which includes kangaroos, koalas, wombats and a quokka; and the baby’s nickname is Koala.

That’s just a bit of fun, however, and I don’t want to give the impression that this is a lighthearted novel. On the contrary it is a deeply disturbing psychological study.  Emily has been traumatised by having gone through a very difficult birthing experience. She is on maternity leave from her job, and although she loves Roman and Holden she has started missing her friend, Daisy, whom she is determined to find. Daisy was Emily’s roommate in college, and she was everything Emily wanted to be, until she suddenly disappeared from Emily’s life.

With Friends Like You is a compelling read. I was blindsided when the truth about Emily and Daisy was revealed. It’s a clever story and one of those that when you get to the end you might want to go back to the beginning and start reading it again, armed with a new perspective. I can recommend it highly!

Published by Dutton

Departure(s) by Julian Barnes

 

I am so sorry I got to the end of this book. I was loving reading everything Julian Barnes had to say, whether as essayist, memoirist or novelist. I wasn’t sure into which genre the book was meant to fit. Part 1 is, basically, an essay on memory: to quote Julian Barnes “…that place where degradation and embellishment overlap”; and “What did TS Eliot say about memory? That no matter how you wrap it in camphor, the moths will get in”. Wonderful observations, I wish I’d made them myself!

Then follows the story of a relationship between two of Julian’s friends. It is a two-part story, the parts being separated by forty years. Julian was at university with Stephen and Jean (not, as he explains, their real names) when they were all in their early twenties. Forty years later they all reconnect, and the second part of the story begins. I don’t know if these were real people, or whether at this point I was reading a novel or a memoir, but I didn’t mind one way or the other, I just wanted to keep on reading, and did so until the early hours of this morning.

I bought this book on Kindle but I’m going to have to get the paperback now as there are lots of places in it I’ll be wanting to revisit.

Published by Vintage

And the Corpse wore Tartan by Stuart MCBride

The character, Detective Sergeant Roberta Steel, is usually a fun diversion in Stuart McBride’s Logan McRae books; in this one, though, cut off by bad weather from the outside world Roberta goes it alone.

 Stuart McBride says in his foreword that And the Corpse wore Tartan began as a short story and turned into a shortish book; and it would have been a terrific short story. The opening chapters were so funny I was laughing out loud, but I have to say I would have loved it if Logan McRae had made an appearance at that stage and taken over the reins. 

A wedding in a Scottish castle decorated with an over abundance of tartan and stuffed animals becomes the scene of a bizarrely staged murder. Roberta, who has arrived hoping to turn Susan’s working weekend into a romantic interlude, assumes control of the investigation by flashing her out-of-date detective sergeant’s ID. Lots of dark, gloomy, scary woods, constant rain and, to Roberta’s horror, overbearing, hyphenated Tories fill the pages.

Please hurry back, Logan McRae, you know how to deal with Roberta.

Published by Pan Macmillan 

The Sleeper Lies by Andrea Mara

 

This is another, earlier (2018) Andrea Mara novel in which she is at her scariest, most stress-inducing, most intriguing best. Although Marianne has a flat in Dublin, she has been spending time working from home in the old cottage in the Wicklow Hills she has inherited from her father.

The story slips easily from Marianne’s present to cover events in her past dating back to 1999, including her relationship with Ray, a successful author who was a complicated man, to put it mildly; and her visits to Denmark to learn more about her late mother. Although complex, the book is never confusing and there was, for me, no frantic searching through back pages to keep track of who, what or where bits of the story fitted in. 

Marianne’s cottage is in a relatively isolated spot, it is snowy weather and she is feeling particularly vulnerable when things like footprints in the snow and the strange objects start appearing. I have the feeling I always describe Andrea Mara’s books as nail biters, and I have to say this one was a nail biter par excellence ! There was no way I could guess the ending, and isn’t that just how a psychological crime novel should be?

Published by Poolbeg, Crimson Press Ltd.

One Click by Andrea Mara

This is another cautionary tale by Andrea Mara about the possible consequences of carelessly using social media. Lauren is a psychologist with two daughters; her husband has left her and moved in with a woman who lives two doors along, she has an unreasonable boss at work, and a particularly difficult client. She finds release from her stressful life in posting on social media lots of comments and pictures of her daily happenings.

While she and her daughters are holidaying in Italy, Lauren takes a photograph of a young woman sitting on a beach and posts it to Snapchat, saying: “*All* the envy on my morning run - this is #howIwishIspentmytwenties”.”. She then shares the picture to Facebook and Twitter. She ignores her 13- and 15- year old daughters’ advice that she should not take photos without the subject’s knowledge or consent, telling them this was just a ‘candid’ shot’, completely harmless to anyone. The daughters are right, of course, and the proverbial can of beans which has been opened makes for another tension filled thriller in Andrea Mara’s dark, nerve wracking and compulsively readable style.

Lots of classic thriller style twists and turns, and an impossible (for me) to guess outcome!

Published by Crimson of Poolbeg Press Ltd

The Other Side of the Wall by Andrea Mara

 Reading-wise, 2026 has been a mixed bag so far. My first book of the year was the brilliant The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell, then came two eminently forgettable books, and now here is Andrea Mara’s first novel, The Other Side of the Wall. Since I only post reviews of books I have enjoyed and would recommend, this one gets a guernsey, absolutely! I thought I had read all of Andrea Mara’s books, so coming upon this one, published in 2017, came as a hugely welcome surprise,

This is a fabulously creepy psychological thriller. Sylvia looks out her window one night and sees a child’s body floating in the pool in her new neighbour’s back yard. Or does she? Sylvia is exhausted from going back to work after the birth of her baby, on top of which the man who replaced her during her maternity leave is trying to sabotage her; she must have imagined what she saw. Sam and Kate are the people who have bought the next door house, and there is trouble brewing in their relationship as Kate is becoming ever more suspicious of Sam’s  behaviour.

This is the ultimate nail biter, page turner, unputdownabler. Andrea Mara obviously began the novel-writing part of her career in the  manner in which she intended to continue. In this one the suspense begins to build from page l and gathers momentum right up to the last line, leaving this reader needing a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down!

Published by Crimson