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Good Neighbors by Sarah Langan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sarah Langan’s new novel is a riveting and brilliantly realized character-driven thriller. Full of tension and tightly controlled prose, GOOD NEIGHBORS is also achingly suspenseful, aided by brief forward flashes in the form of after-the-fact articles and interviews that build a steady sense of dread as the story careens toward its shocking climax. It reminded me in some ways of Jack Ketchum’s classic THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, that frustration and worry that comes with reading about characters who ought to know better making the wrong choices over and over. Of course, that’s partially the point of Langan’s novel, how easy it is for people to make the wrong choices while convinced they’re making the right ones, and how easily they can be led to believe something they’re already predisposed to believe. It’s really well done and never falters in its realistic and immersive depictions of the residents of Maple Street. GOOD NEIGHBORS more than fulfills the promise of Langan’s earlier novels and leaves me eager to see what comes next. Sarah Langan is on my list of must-read authors!

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The Troop by Nick Cutter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes you just want a good, fast-paced, gross horror novel, and Nick Cutter’s THE TROOP certainly delivers on that, but Cutter also gives us well-drawn characters we come to care about and situations that both terrify (that cave!) and move us emotionally (the outstanding turtle scene). The book started off slowly for me, but boy did it pick up! By the end, I was convinced I was reading a horror novel that would be remembered as a classic for years to come. Highly recommended, as long as you can stomach a lot of very gross body horror and gore.

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And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Believe it or not, I hadn’t read any Agatha Christie before, so I thought I’d start with what is perhaps her most famous mystery, AND THEN THERE WERE NONE. The book held a number of surprises for me, some good, some not. Getting the things I didn’t like out of the way first, I was very surprised by how sparse the prose is. There’s very little in the way of description or detail, to the point where it reads almost more like a script than a novel. (Although in Christie’s defense, I found there was often just enough for my imagination to fill in the blanks.) There’s not much in the way of characterization, either. In the earlier parts of the novel, I had trouble telling the difference between several of the characters, particularly the older male characters like Justice Wargrave, Dr. Armstrong, and General Macarthur.

Still, once I got used to Christie’s style, I enjoyed AND THEN THERE WERE NONE very much, especially as the story went on and the number of suspects dwindled while the number of victims grew. I’m proud to say I figured out at least one small part of how the mysterious U.N. Owen pulled it off, but certainly not all of it, and I most definitely did not guess Owen’s true identity. I can see why this is such a popular novel. It’s the ultimate locked-room mystery, where the room is a remote, isolated island and there’s a good chance the killer is still be locked in with you. Definitely worth reading!

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The Writing Life: Reflections, Recollections, And a Lot of Cursing by Jeff Strand
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A charming and highly readable non-fiction book about what it’s like to be a writer. Author Jeff Strand doesn’t offer the reader any how-to-write advice in THE WRITING LIFE (there are plenty of those kinds of books available already) but instead focuses on what to expect once you’re published, liberally peppered with his own amusing and often self-deprecating anecdotes. It’s a fast, funny read that will have Strand’s fellow authors nodding in agreement and chuckling in recognition, while giving aspiring writers a chance to rethink whether the craziness of a writing career is really what they want. While there’s a definite “isn’t this funny and/or ridiculous” tone to Strand’s authorial voice, there’s actually a lot to be learned from THE WRITING LIFE, not the least of which is how to cope with a writing career that, to paraphrase the author, you quite honestly thought would be more successful by now. Highly recommended for writers and interested readers alike.

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