Friday, August 11, 2023

Five top suburban thrillers

Kia Abdullah is a bestselling author and travel writer. Her novels include Take It Back, a Guardian and Telegraph thriller of the year, Truth Be Told, which was shortlisted for a Diverse Book Award, and Next of Kin which was longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award and won the Adult Fiction Diverse Book Award 2022.

Her new novel, Those People Next Door [US title: Perfectly Nice Neighbors], is out now.

At the Waterstones blog Abdullah tagged five favorite suburban thrillers, including:
All That's Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien

Journalist Ky Tran receives a phone call that breaks her life apart. Her brother, Denny – smart, sweet, guileless Denny – has been brutally murdered inside a busy restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta. There were plenty of witnesses, so surely the killer will be easily collared. When Ky returns home for the funeral, however, she learns that the police are at a loss. Each of the diners in the restaurant that night claims that they saw nothing. Who are they all protecting and why? This suburb isn’t upscale like the others but is just as cloistered, and Ky struggles to find any answers. Part gripping mystery, part portrait of trauma and displacement, All That's Left Unsaid was my book of the year in 2022.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue