Crime and thrillers book of the month: Young woman on the road to ruin

Beckerman moves the action back and forth, showing us the weeks and months that precede Isla’s death, as well as those that follow it, as the hit and run driver can’t be found and Abby falls further into grief. You’ve watched Adolescence, right? This has the same feel to it – of teenage lives gone horribly, terrifyingly astray, despite loving parents and childhoods; of parents absolutely unaware of what is going on in their children’s lives.

Elle has everything a girl could dream of: handsome husband, Dom, a beautiful baby and enough money (thanks to Dom) that she could give up a job that is failing to recognise her talents (her hubby is urging her to do just that and to live a life of luxury as a stay-at-home mother)

Elle still isn’t happy, though she can’t work out why; maybe she should be following the marriage rule laid out for her by her best friend, Sal (it would be a spoiler to tell you what that is but I violently disagree with it). In the meantime, she’ll keep on drowning her sorrows, and letting Dom take the lion’s share of looking after their baby – a child she can’t even refer to by name, she feels so detached from her. After all, Dom is the perfect father and husband, isn’t he?

Helen Monks Takhar’s The Marriage Rule (HQ) – which opens with Elle in a very dangerous situation and goes on to lay out how she got there and what happens next – is a whale of a read; a stomach-roiling page turner and a disturbing look at how women end up in such bad places. I was so invested in Elle’s predicament that I had a look at the ending to calm myself down. I don’t recommend cheating in that fashion, but I do recommend this excellent thriller.

Back to the adventures of Stephen King’s favourite detective Holly Gibney in Never Flinch (Hodder & Stoughton). This time Holly, who has faced down various supernatural phenomena in the past, is up against more human menaces – your usual sort of serial killer, knocking off victims while leaving cryptic messages for the police, as well as a mysterious vigilante who is targeting a feminist celebrity speaker on tour. Holly is a private investigator, but she’s so insightful that the police are always calling, asking for her help. She’s willing to give it – and it is, as ever, a joy to see her brilliant leaps of intuition and to watch her warm relationships with her small but devoted group of friends. But – and I write this both as a King completist and a Holly lover – this book doesn’t hold the attention in the way that its predecessors did. Perhaps it’s the overt political messages it contains, ones that I agree with but which feel a little bluntly handled. Or maybe it’s just that it’s hard to believe that so much death and destruction keep occurring in Holly’s city: the Midsomer Murders problem, you might say, in small-town America.

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Photograph by Getty