Review: The Killer Next Door

The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel was a surprise for me—I expected a quick read that wouldn’t necessarily immerse me in the pages but was instead pulled in to an intoxicating tale of secrets, lies and murder. The characters here were developed with beautiful cruelty—a young woman of color trying to outrun her debilitating past; a woman mired so deeply in her own history that she rarely leaves the comfort of her home; and an on-the-lam former bookkeeper who fleeced her former boss and carries with her the burden of bearing witness to his murderous predilections. Other characters are presented as archetypes and referred to by generic titles such as Landlord and Lover, each creepy and disturbing.

Whilst the story is told in a whirlwind of intertwined events that at times were too often beyond the realm of possibility, the author manages to keep the reader turning the pages. Red herrings abound, but the reader discovers the thinly veiled truth about the primary murderer’s identity at around the 60% mark. It’s at that point that I felt things began to come apart a bit. The unraveling of the last 40% added more balls for the writer to juggle instead of more fully exploring one track. A more defined focus on even one or two of the murders/circumstances/corpses would have certainly provided enough of a catalyst to bring this to a close. Instead, bodies are mummified, crushed into dust, left to putrefy and blown to smithereens, by a cast of unlikely participants. Four stars for the brilliant character development and the author’s ability to spin a yarn, but the too-convenient and seemingly rushed ending, coupled with just too much going on at once kept this from the five star bar.

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