Sole Survivors

Serial killers aren’t in the habit of letting their victims survive, and when someone—usually a woman—does escape alive, the trauma is likely to leave deep, lasting scars. Two popular thriller writers recently published novels featuring sole survivors coping with the aftereffects of their experiences.

Cold Cold Heart

Tami Hoag
Hardcover, 368 pages

Dutton Adult, January 13, 2015

ISBN-10: 0525954546

ISBN-13: 978-0525954545

Dana Nolan, a TV reporter in her twenties, escaped from a notorious serial murderer by killing him before he could kill her. But she is left with physical wounds that have destroyed her beauty and a head injury that scrambles her memory, robs her of the ability to speak coherently, and makes her dependent on her mother and stepfather. Tormented by flashbacks and nightmares, filled with rage at her own helplessness, Dana has little hope for her future. She can’t clearly recall her ordeal or the man who brutalized her, but the police push her to try, while her hovering mother wants to enclose her in a protective bubble.

Leaving the rehab facility after a long stay, Dana has no choice but to move back to her hometown and the house she grew up in. Instead of finding the peace and quiet she needs to heal, she discovers that her abduction has reignited interest in the disappearance of her best friend, Casey Grant, the summer after their high school graduation. When she encounters Casey’s ex-boyfriend, John Villante, she blurts, “You killed my best friend.” John, a Middle East war veteran so crippled by post-traumatic stress disorder that he’s reduced to delivering pizzas for a living and occupying his boyhood room in his despicable father’s house, has a lot in common with Dana, but they see each other as enemies. Tim Carver, Dana’s high school boyfriend and an officer on the local police force, makes sure John remains under the shadow of suspicion not only for Casey’s disappearance and probable murder, but also for any other crime that occurs in town. When her therapist advises Dana to find a “project” to give her days a purpose, she passes up harmless, enjoyable occupations and chooses instead to find out what happened to Casey. Driven to learn the truth even as she struggles with her own handicaps, Dana puts her life in danger again to uncover explosive secrets beneath the surface of small town life.

The mystery of what happened to Casey is slow to get started, and readers never get to know the long-gone girl well enough to care about her. Avid mystery fans may spot Casey’s killer before the book’s climactic scenes. But Cold Cold Heart is nevertheless a gripping novel because it immerses readers in the emotional turmoil of two people suffering from different forms of PTSD. Although neither Dana nor John is always likable, it’s impossible to be unmoved by Hoag’s depiction of their struggles to find solid footing in a world that seems to shift constantly beneath their feet. In an afterword, Hoag describes the relatively mild but never-ending consequences of a head injury she suffered as a child and challenges readers to learn more about PTSD, a condition that affects far more people than we may realize.

  

Die Again

Tess Gerritsen

Hardcover, 352 pages

Ballantine Books, December 30, 2014

ISBN-10: 0345543858

ISBN-13: 978-0345543851

I’ve read every Rizzoli and Isles novel Gerritsen has published, and I found this one different from the others, disappointing in some respects, but ultimately enjoyable.

About a third of the book is set in the past and narrated by Millie Jacobson, a young woman who was on safari in a remote part of Botswana several years ago when the guide started killing the tourists one by one. Alternating with Millie’s unfolding story are chapters set in present-day Boston, where homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles are investigating the grisly murder of big-game hunter and taxidermist Leon Gott. The victim, who was putting his taxidermy skills to work on a rare leopard that died at a local zoo, bears the claw marks of a big cat and has been gutted and hung like a hunter’s kill. After discovering that Gott’s son disappeared in Botswana, Rizzoli and Isles wonder if the unsolved safari homicides might be connected to the Boston murder. Eventually Jane Rizzoli and her husband, FBI agent Gabriel Dean, travel to Africa to question the sole survivor of the safari massacre, who lives in fear that the killer will come back for her one day.

The scenes set in Africa are riveting as they detail the safari group’s inexorable slide into chaos and terror. The Boston scenes with Rizzoli and Isles are less compelling. The grind of an investigation, interrupted by personal scenes with Rizzoli’s parents, can’t compete with the chills of people trying to stay alive in the African bush while a killer stalks them as if they’re prey animals. (Rizzoli’s parents, at this stage, would be tiresome in any story. Why would her mother, after building a happy, fulfilling new life on her own, make the stupid decision she does?) The usual spark seems to be missing from the odd couple friendship of Rizzoli and Isles.

On the strength of the African scenes, though, I recommend Die Again. Fans of the series will not want to miss it.

Reading Psychological Suspense

Psychological suspense is what I most enjoy reading, but despite the popularity of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girls and a flood of books labeled psychological suspense and promoted as “The next Gone Girl!” I have trouble finding enough of it to feed my habit.

I’m not sure many people, including New York publishers, know what it is.

When I asked friends if they’d read any psychological suspense novels they could recommend, a surprising number suggested murder mysteries and gory thrillers. And some books labeled “chilling psychological suspense” by their publishers turn out to be either (1) slow-moving mysteries in which the characters think a lot or (2) pallid thrillers with shallow characters and write-by-numbers plot twists. (“It’s page 100, time to throw in a threatening phone call or e-mail.”) Many otherwise excellent crime novels are also erroneously labeled psychological suspense.

The blending of subgenres that’s so common these days contributes to the confusion. Many modern mysteries and thrillers contain more insight into human behavior than genre novels of the past. Tana French, for example, demonstrates exquisite understanding of emotion and motivation—but that doesn’t make her novels psychological suspense. She writes superb mysteries about cops solving murders, and the investigation drives every plot. I’ve seen them described as “psychological mysteries” and believe that’s an accurate label.

A psychological suspense novel may contain murder, but crime-solving isn’t the driving force. The focus is on the emotional and mental impact of events on the protagonist, and on the character’s struggle to survive what is happening to him or her. The pace is usually slower, with less physical action, fewer of the jolting twists that mark modern thrillers. Suspense builds gradually, until the sense of dread becomes overwhelming. Something terrible is going to happen, but neither the protagonist nor the reader knows what to expect or when it will come. Fear of an unknown, unpredictable danger is at the heart of psychological suspense, and tone is everything. People and situations are never what they seem.

Three of my favorite authors of psychological suspense are Thomas H. Cook, Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, and Lisa Unger. My favorite Cook novel is an older one, Mortal Memory, although I enjoy everything he publishes. The Barbara Vine novel A Dark-Adapted Eye is a masterpiece, and such Rendell books as The Bridesmaid perfectly fit the definition of psychological suspense. Unger is brilliant at creating damaged characters caught up in nightmare scenarios. In her latest book, In the Blood, echoes from a young woman’s horrific childhood threaten to wreck her carefully constructed present life, with a young boy serving as the agent of destruction.

One of the most engrossing psychological suspense novels I’ve read in the last few years is Until I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson, told from the viewpoint of a woman who awakens every morning with no memory of her identity and past. Her struggle to retain some scraps of memory from day to day, and to discover what obliterated her life, is riveting and terrifying. The isolated heroine, doubting her own sanity, has long been a staple in the subgenre, but Watson made a stock character into something wholly original.

Domestic turmoil is fertile ground for writers of psychological suspense, and some of the most compelling recent novels in the subgenre are tales of families trapped in terrifying situations.

The Cry by Australian Helen Fitzgerald is an outstanding novel that deserves the kind of acclaim and broad readership that Gone Girl has received. Rather than fitting tightly into a genre category, it deals with issues familiar to most people and succeeds as a novel on every level. Throughout the book, we know that Joanna, the Scottish protagonist, is on trial in Australia, but exactly what she has done isn’t clear. The story that unfolds follows the characters through the kind of ordinary domestic dramas that can lead, with one bad decision, to catastrophe. Joanna fell in love and had a baby with Alistair, a journalist married to another woman. Alistair’s wife, now his ex, has taken their teenage daughter back to the family’s home country, Australia, which forces him to travel there if he wants to see his first child. During a grueling flight from Glasgow to Australia, the baby cries constantly and Joanna, ill and exhausted, tries to calm him while Alistair blissfully naps in his seat. Other passengers, annoyed by the baby’s crying, become verbally abusive toward the harried Joanna, and she erupts into a tirade. Her behavior serves as evidence against her later, when the baby disappears in Australia and the case becomes an international sensation. The reader knows the truth, knows how much Joanna and Alistair are hiding, and the torment Joanna endures is harrowing. This is an unforgettable story.

The Lie of You by Jane Lythell also revolves around a mother, a baby, and an intruder in a happy family’s life. Kathy, an architectural magazine editor, has no idea that a junior colleague, a recently hired Finnish beauty named Heja, hides a raging jealousy behind her cool exterior. Telling the story from both women’s viewpoints, the author lets the reader watch as Heja carries out her plan to destroy Kathy’s marriage and career. Why is she doing it? The answer lies in the past and involves devastating secrets.

Until You’re Mine by Samantha Hayes is trickier, challenging the reader to figure out what’s really going on. To the observer, Claudia’s life is wonderful: she’s dedicated to her job as a social worker, she’s happily married with two stepsons she loves, and she’s pregnant with her first baby. When she hires Zoe as a nanny and helper, the household becomes increasingly unsettled and nasty cracks open in the perfect façade. This novel has an ending that made me go back and start again to see how the author did it.

This Is the Water by Yannick Murphy doesn’t live up to the publisher’s promise of “a fast-paced story of murder, adultery, parenthood, and romance” but it has other qualities that make it memorable. A group of parents in a small New England community become entangled in one another’s lives as their young daughters train for a swim meet at “the facility.” Annie, who stands out as the protagonist in a swirl of viewpoints, has two daughters on the swim team and a husband who has lost interest in her. While she’s in the bleachers flirting with a friend’s husband, a killer—who gets his own viewpoint—watches one of the girls. The girl is later murdered, and the killing triggers a series of events that test relationships and lead to a stunning conclusion. This book’s biggest handicap—or its greatest pleasure, depending on your taste— is the way the author tells the story. She begins many sentences, perhaps a majority, with “This is” and uses second person for Annie’s scenes, as in: “This is you, waiting for your daughters…” I found the device so intrusive that it almost ruined the book for me. I also learned more than I ever wanted to know about children’s competitive swimming and the petty jealousies of “swim moms.” Yet the final section of the novel is excellent, and the book overall has many moments of striking insight that give it depth and resonance.

That, above all, is what I look for in psychological suspense: depth and resonance.