The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


You never really know your neighbours, do you? Especially if you are live in the converted house in Beulah Grove where all the residents of the flats have something to hide.
In what was once an enviable property in an up and coming area the lewd, leering, lumpish Landlord lets his flats to a motley group of tenants. Down in the basement is sitting tenant Vesta who has lived there all her life, first with her parents and now alone, surrounded by the past.
Then there is asylum seeker Hossein, a wanted man in his own country with his own personal grief and guilt to overcome. Recently divorced Gerard Bright plays The Ride of the Valkyries over and over and over and hides away in his lair, never mixing or speaking to anyone else. Chatty, young Cher, fiercely independent, tries to make ends meet the best way she can considering her little secret. Collette is also running from something or someone, trying to hide away and not be found. And up in the attic is polite but not quite right Thomas, desperate for friends but who makes everyone around him feel uncomfortable.
But who is the Lover, a needy individual with a strange cohort of companions, who will go that extra length to ensure he has the company he craves? Who is The Killer and who will be his next victim?
In the midst of a stifling heatwave, in a house where the drains are backing up and the stench of foulness gets worse, the tenants are forced to come together to cope with an incident in order to keep their own secrets safe but it is only a matter of time before the biggest secret of all is out...
Oh, Alex! You’ve really gone to another level with your latest book!
The fetid foulness of the Landlord had me cringing; the meaty smell of rot and filth made my nostrils curl in disgust and then we come to the Lover’s skills, so clearly detailed that I felt I was observing him in his gory yet fascinating task, and it was all so obviously normal to him, so well thought out and planned, he might have got away with it forever. Yet for all the darkness and horror his aftercare of his companions provided just the right amount of dark humour, as did the Incident which brings the tenants together. Disgusting and grim, I could practically smell the stench and couldn’t help feeling repulsed by the graphic description but again there was a dark humour that lightened the load, for the reader at least, if not the characters!
With stunning detail that begs the question’ just how far did Alex go in her research?’ – Just joking, although the detail is superb as is the characterisation and thought processes of those characters; Alex has really got into their heads and made them into a top cast.
This is a very enjoyable book in a ghoulish and sinister way, capturing the imagination and maybe the hidden fears that lurk in the reader’s minds....and will quite possibly make you look at your neighbours in a new and knowing way.....




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