The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood

5 Stars from me!

This is the second book by Alex Marwood that I’ve read and much like The Wicked Girls – I absolutely loved it!

I can well see this being made into a TV series (it put me in mind of What Remains) or film as it was so easy to visualise while reading it. More of a black comedy than a truly scary book – think along the lines of Shallow Grave and you won’t go far wrong. The Killer Next Door focuses on the mundanity of life, day-to-day chores and inconveniences with lovely little snippets of human behaviour playing out among the warped world around us – all wrapped up in a subplot of macabre humour.

I felt all the characters were cleverly devised and interacted well with each other. The additional story-line given to Collette was a nice touch even though the story could have carried itself quite nicely without it.

Very, very different the The Wicked Girls but just as good – highly recommended.

I’m loving Alex Marwood right now and hope she is busy writing more 🙂

Synopsis: A taut new psychological thriller from the Edgar Award nominated author of The Wicked Girls

Alex Marwood’s debut novel, The Wicked Girls, earned her lavish praise from the likes of Stephen King, Laura Lippman, and Erin Kelly, and was shortlisted for an 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 neighbours?

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, 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.