Just Jennifer

The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood (Penguin Books, October 28, 2014)

23 Beulah Grove, a run-down, cash only apartment building in South London is most decidedly not a place where everyone knows your name.  In fact, it is just the opposite: if you know what someone calls themselves, you can be pretty sure that isn’t what their real name is.  Body parts and smelly drains backed up with who knows what are par for the course for this flop house.  Many feel as if they are being watched, and they probably are, be the closed circuit cameras the smarmy, grossly obese landlord, but worse of all, Collette, who is on the run from her former boss who she saw kill someone, finds evidence that the previous tenant of her apartment was murdered…or at least dismembered…and becomes fearful she may be next, fairly certain the murderer is a fellow border.  One summer evening, a terrible incident leaves the residents with no choice but to form a most unholy alliance: if one of their secrets is revealed, they will all be revealed, unraveled.  Tight plotting, constant action and well-dawn, real characters, even with all their odd proclivities, propel Edgar Award winning Marwood’s sophomore offering to a chilling climax that very few will have seen coming.  A perfect read to stay up late at night with, especially during the seasons of goblins and ghostly things.