good fences

Lena is facing some life changes. She’s separated from her husband Charlie, and her son Rufus will soon be off to university. She and Rufus usually watch thrillers together once a week, as Rufus is interested in filmmaking. So when he got some sound equipment from school, wanting to record some of the ambient noise around their house at night, he had no idea where that would lead.

Rufus had to go help his father, a musician, with his gig. He left the equipment with Lena, who promised she would go out and do some recording while he’s working. But when she accidentally overhears the new neighbors’ conversation. It sounded a little like they were planning something nefarious, and when Lena realized she’d recorded something she wasn’t meant to overhear, and that the new neighbors may have seen her, she moves the microphone away and goes back into the house. But she can still hear them talking, and it doesn’t sound good.

Lena works at Citizens Advice part-time. When she was younger, she trained to be a midwife. She had almost finished her training when something happened at the clinic where she worked, and she was so upset that she left her training. She ended up getting married to Charlie and having a son, so it worked out. But she still thinks of that time in her life. At Citizens Advice, she helps people with their problems. But when she sees one of her clients having an argument with the new neighbors, she wonders what is going on.

She finds out that the new neighbors are leaving for the weekend, and she realizes that she still has a key to the house from the old neighbor. And when she hears what sounds like a baby crying in the dark house, she feels like she has to make sure that there is not a baby left behind. She uses the key to get in the house and looks around. She finds the cries are coming from a realistic baby doll, but more importantly, she finds a wall of newspaper articles about the clinic where she had done her midwife training. She doesn’t understand why the new neighbors would have all that information, newspaper articles and photos, in their home.

And when she finally does figure out why they know so much about the clinic where she used to work, it will be too late for her to stop the inevitable.

Claire Douglas is masterful with thrillers, and The New Neighbors is another stunning example. She builds danger little by little, piece by piece, until you’re in the story way too deep to stop. I had to spend a lot of this story trying to parse what what real and what was just white noise to the mystery as the secrets built up around me. And when it all came out, I was a little bit right and a little bit wrong, and I just wanted to know how it was all going to come together at the end.

I thought The New Neighbors was a crazy ride through present and past, bad decisions and dangerous friends, with a sprinkling of classic cinema thrillers running through the background. It’s bitingly clever and tantalizingly thrilling, with little crumbs of truth dropped in all the right ways and all the right places. I had a great time reading this book, and I think fans of thrillers, both books and films, could find this story compelling.

Egalleys for The New Neighbors were provided by Harper Perennial through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.