The Killer Next Door
by Alex Marwood
Trade Paperback
Penguin (October
28, 2014)
Alex Marwood’s first book, The Wicked Girls (which won the Edgar Award for Best Paperback
Original), was one of my favorite novels of 2013. Shifting back and forth in
time, it focused on two women who killed a child together when they were both
eleven years old, grew up in separate prisons, and haven’t seen each other
since. As adults with new identities and very different lives, they come
together again with disastrous consequences. The Wicked Girls is dark and probing, an exquisite psychological
suspense novel.
The Killer Next Door,
Marwood’s second novel, is a different sort of crime story, creepy and
sometimes grotesquely comic, but no less absorbing. The reader learns from the opening
pages that the police are investigating the discovery of body parts in a decrepit
South London rooming house and that a missing resident named Collette is
believed to be a victim—but not the only one. The story then moves back in time
to reveal what led up to this point.
Collette, in her thirties, is on the run after witnessing a
murder. Using a fake name (she is actually Lisa Dunne) and carrying a bag of
cash that she never lets out of her sight, she returns to England after years
abroad to see her dying mother. She takes refuge in the anonymity of the rooming
house, although it means putting up with a repugnant, lecherous landlord, and
moves into the quarters vacated by a young woman who has mysteriously vanished.
The other females in residence are Cher,
a teenage runaway who survives through petty theft, and Vesta, the independent
but motherly woman in her sixties who occupies a basement flat. The male
tenants are Hossein, a handsome Iranian seeking political asylum, and two nondescript
bachelors named Thomas and Gerard.
One of the men is a serial killer who calls himself The
Lover. He keeps his victims’ corpses in his flat as quiet companions until they
begin to produce an odor that can’t be covered up with air freshener. Then he dismembers
the bodies and disposes of the pieces around the house and down the toilets. The
place is plagued with backed-up drains and a stench accentuated by the
oppressive heat of summer. When Collette moves in, The Lover is looking for a
fresh victim.
The secretive tenants tend to keep to themselves, but one
hot night an accident brings them together and sets in motion a continually
surprising string of events.
Marwood has the same merciless eye and penetrating insight
into human behavior that distinguishes Ruth Rendell’s writing. Although the men
are less well realized, the three women are vividly drawn and memorable.
This novel is not for the easily repulsed, and at times the descriptions
of disgusting sights, smells, and actions seem repetitive. Yet—again like
Rendell—Marwood finds a macabre humor in all these goings-on.
In the final pages, Marwood refrains from escalating the sense
of dread into a predictable bloodbath and instead takes a turn that leads to a
totally satisfying conclusion. Despite the events leading up to it, the ending allows
the reader to close the book with a smile and lingering thoughts about the
meaning of friendship and family.
I received a free copy of this book from the
publisher in exchange for an honest review.
