Book Reviews - Us by David Nicholls

 Us by David Nicholls
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Story
Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that, against all odds, seduces beautiful Connie into a second date and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades after their relationship first blossomed in London, they live more or less happily in the suburbs with their moody seventeen-year-old son, Albie; then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. 

The timing couldn’t be worse. Hoping to encourage her son’s artistic interests, Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world’s greatest works of art as a family, and she can’t bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead with the original plan is for the best anyway. Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage and might even help him bond with Albie. 

Narrated from Douglas’s endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves and learning how to get closer to a son who’s always felt like a stranger.

LOVED this book - I mainly read psychological thrillers and it was refreshing to have a change of genre. Having enjoyed 'One Day', I new this author would not disappoint. A tale of pursuit - encapsulated within a 'Grand Tour' of Europe, but with deeper layers involving the search for happiness, forgiveness, faded love and nostalgia. Some beautiful poignant moments, delightful wit, cringe-worthy descriptions of Douglas and his clumsy handling of various travel and domestic incidents that I'm sure many will relate to! A gentle book - sad, hopeful and with lovely philosophical resonances. Highly recommended!

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Why I love writing Psychological Thrillers!

As a child, I devoured the Famous Five mysteries by Enid Blyton and was later drawn to crime thrillers, such as A Simple Plan by Scott Smith and The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth. Ever since they became recognised as a distinct category, however, I’ve been captivated by psychological thrillers, loving writers such as Minette Walters and Nicci French, from the 1990’s onwards. At the time, I was in awe of all writers and the idea of actually putting together a psychological thriller myself was completely beyond me!

Before I first had a go at writing fiction in 2008, I was a psychotherapist for 15 years. As well as seeing clients with mainstream issues such as low self-esteem, depression and relationship issues, I was privileged to work with ex-convicts from high-security institutions. I found this work fascinating and aside from giving me ideas for novels, it gave me considerable insight into the disturbed and criminal mind.

So, should I try to write murder mysteries or psychological thrillers..? Which would I choose? In the end I didn’t. I put the two genres together.

In my first attempt at a novel, The Evil Beneath, I wanted to create a story that had a distinct mystery on the surface and a deeper psychological thriller lurking underneath. To create dissonance between what the reader ‘knows’ and what the lead character hasn’t yet worked out. I like to find ways to mislead the reader and to create jeopardy from the ‘inside-out’, rather than from the ‘outside-in’. By this I mean that the characters are exposed to danger on a mental level – mind-games and deception – rather than (or as well as!) a physical one.

I’ve written nine psych thrillers to date, with another in the pipeline, and my plots usually centre around the  hidden unreliability or instability of individuals in the story. My protagonists often face a tortuous situation: a missing child, a death made to look like suicide, a stalker, a simple but deadly mistake, for instance. 

In Don’t you Dare, for example, the story starts with a mother misunderstanding a situation involving her daughter and killing someone. This kind of mystery allows the reader to get right inside the minds of key players. It encourages them to try to anticipate how characters might handle certain dilemmas and tempts the reader towards trying to figure out what their true motives are. Not just ‘who dunnit’– but ‘why’ and ‘how dunnit’! It also invites readers to consider: what on earth would I do if I was faced with this situation..?

Most of all, I like the idea of dramatic events happening to ordinary people. A dark and deadly puzzle involving clues where hidden dangers come to light. I love twists and turns and that big OMG moment at the end, of course – that turns everything on its head! In my novel, No Longer Safe, for instance, nothing is as it seems… Many readers told me that when they got to the end of the book, they were so gob-smacked, they had to go back to the beginning to discover how the events turned out as they did! That’s such a great compliment for a writer. I love to knock my readers sideways – and there’s certainly a delicious sting in the tail in that novel!

In all my books I like exploring moral dilemmas and what happens when relationships are blighted by jealousy, secrets, lies or revenge. I like writing ‘domestic noir’ – what could be more scary than thinking you’re safe in your own home and finding that’s where your worst nightmares begin…

My current favourite authors are Belinda Bauer, Claire Kendall,  Lucy Clarke and Sabine Durrant. Brilliant books I’ve read recently are: Until You’re Mine by Samantha Hayes and Tideline by Penny Hancock.

Book Review: Skin Deep by Liz Nugent

Skin Deep by Liz Nugent
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Skin Deep isn’t what I expected. It’s billed as a psychological thriller and in my view it isn’t. I’ll explain why in a moment.

Firstly, I’ll give my views on what it IS. It’s the dramatic tale of a woman’s life from a damaged childhood on a remote island, through tragedy and trauma to middle age. The narrative is driven by one woman, Delia, focusing on her family and the impact she has on the lives of others she touches during her life’s journey. It’s about survival and the lengths Delia will go to in order to protect herself. It’s about character and we get to know the many complicated and contradictory layers of Delia’s personality as she moves from place to place, country to country, trying to escape her past and reinvent herself in her new setting.

There’s a dead body, but this only plays a small part at the beginning, to hook in the reader, re-appearing within the context of the story at the very end. The novel is extremely gripping, it’s full of drama.

For those interested in why it isn’t a psychological thriller, in my opinion, a psych thriller usually involves an unreliable narrator of some kind – here, Delia is unlikeable, but at no point in the story are we misled by her narrative. Or anyone else’s. Delia pretty much tells it straight, in terms that are hard-edged and always without emotion. There’s no play on the anxiety of a victim. Unlike a psych thriller, there are no attempts to create tension in the audience, to create dissonance between what the reader ‘knows’ and what the character hasn’t yet worked out. Yet, it IS a page-turner - because Delia’s life is fraught and we watch her stagger from one disastrous situation to another. If you like Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley character, you’ll no doubt enjoy this.
Highly recommended!


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Mini Book Review: The Bones of You by Debbie Howells

The Bones of You by Debbie Howells
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A beautiful, tender, touching, deviant, harrowing murder mystery! Love a psychological thriller that can be savoured because the quality of the language is so good, rather than 'raced through' because the plot alone holds a book together. Highly recommended.

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Mini Book Review: The Keeper of Lost Things - Ruth Hogan

Sometimes, I need a break from reading thrillers and dark mysteries. Here's my antidote to the  twisted and chilling underworld of crime I usually read and write about!

The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A joyful, feel-good story with unusual non-heroic characters. There's a tender, bittersweet storyline about collecting and returning lost random items: umbrellas, hair clips, buttons. Each item has its own little story and there's a second entirely separate thread which comes together, poignantly, with the first, at the end.

I love the writing style; gentle, thoughtful, unusual and exquisite! I spread my reading of this beautiful book out so that every day, I looked forward to re-entering the world of lost things as a refuge from everyday life! Completely transporting.

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How Working in a Safe-House helped me write Thrillers

I can honestly say that when it comes to personal experience of the ‘criminal mind’, fact, for me, is just as chilling as fiction. That’s because before I became an author, I'd been a psychotherapist for fifteen years, working from time to time in a safe-house for ex-offenders. The residents were from high-security institutions; women who had served sentences for arson, stabbings, suffocating and all manner of fatal attacks.

So, how has my writing been influenced by working at the safe-house?

Surprisingly, I came away from my encounters with these women feeling more sad, than disturbed. The women had grown up with stabbings, shootings and muggings; they knew no other kind of life. Most had a fragile personality-type, were easily led and got involved with criminal activity because their brothers/sister/mothers lived that life too. Often anti-establishment, they were seeking leadership, gang-culture, excitement and risk-taking. More often than not, they were simply looking for a sense of “family” and belonging.

Since working in the safe-house, I’m inclined to cast women rather than men as the culprits in my books, but they’re never ‘monsters’. While I write about killers and serial killers, they aren’t thugs or callous maniacs. There’s very little violence and gore in my books and far more about harrowing mind-games and dark, driven motives behind the radical acts involved. I’m also fascinated by the differences between law-abiding citizens and those who cross the line into serious crime. I love writing about characters' inner struggle for revenge, their tortured reasons for keeping secrets and telling lies! As a result of all this, I hope my books show a good degree of humanity.

How ‘safe’ was it?

The ‘safe-house’ wasn’t necessarily safe for everyone. During one of my visits, a woman set fire to her room and others self-harmed, as cooking knives and personal property was available as part of the rehabilitation process. Most residents were on antipsychotic medication or drugs for anxiety or depression, so mood-swings was an issue.

The location and confidentiality was very strict, as you can imagine – a place for the women to re-adjust to the idea of integrating back into society. I was there to offer a listening ear for personal problems and fears of going back ‘outside’. Spending time in that volatile setting was tough, but it gave me lots of raw material to slip into my novels!  

 

Perfect Bones

In Perfect Bones, the sole witness to a gruesome attack – a teenage artist living on a narrowboat – is traumatised and can't utter a word. That’s when gutsy protagonist, psychologist Samantha Willerby, is given seven days by the police to coax information from him about the killer. When he finally makes a sketch, it's not what anyone expects – but by then another murder has been committed...

One of the techniques I used in the safe-house was art therapy and in the novel this method is used for the mute witness. The reader has to watch and wait for the artist to show what he saw. 

 

I was deeply affected by the individuals I met in the safe-house and still wonder what happened to them and how their lives turned out. Did they re-offend and end up back inside? Did they turn their lives around? As an author, I like to pose the question ‘how would you react in this tricky situation?’ just as, when I think of those women, I wonder how I would have turned out if I’d had their dysfunctional backgrounds, violent environment and deprivation to cope with.

Perfect Bones is available at all Amazon outlets.

This interview was first published on the Crime Readers' Association website.

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Book Review: The Moment by Douglas Kennedy

The Moment by Douglas Kennedy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Whilst not a psychological thriller as such, this book contains many 'psychological' themes! Kennedy's books have been described as 'page-turners that make you think' - a fitting tagline in my view.

Swept along by the author's beautiful and fluid language, I was very quickly wrapped up in and mesmerised by the characters and storyline of 'The Moment'. An author, Thomas, receives a surprising package that takes him back to another period in his life. A time when he was on location in Berlin close to ‘the wall’ (mid 1980s), poised to write a non-fiction book about divided Germany. The reader goes back in time with him and follows his daily life as he 'crosses over' - stepping into and back out of the grim existence at that time. On the Western side, we observe him adapting to a quirky bohemian lifestyle, rubbing shoulders with artists and free-thinkers. Then he meets a woman who carries a traumatic and complex history with her.

The book becomes their story and not all is as it seems - an engrossing tale about love, choices, loss and most importantly, the handling of betrayal.

Yes, it probably is a bit too long as noted by other readers. The part where we see a section of the story through the eyes of another narrator, does not add enough in my view, especially as we already know the outcome of events from the first narrator.

Nevertheless, there are twists and unexpected turns in the story and a solid ending. Moments of self-awareness and psychological/philosophical insights sit like little gems within the pages. I have read Douglas Kennedy before and I will be reading more of him.

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