The little pea in my brain was on fire with wild synapses firing and misfiring in all directions while I conjured my paltry theories. This tautly written missive was my introduction to the twisted and formidable brilliance of Peter Swanson and I was absorbed, enthralled, riveted, and transfixed. Holy arboretum, Batman – that was a gnarly and dreadfully diseased family tree that made the roots of my contaminated ancestry appear glossy with vitality.

“Can I come up?” he asked, and Hen thought of vampires, how they needed to be invited in. He walked the short distance to the steps that led to Hen’s porch, then stopped. Matthew tried hard to discern if he was actually handsome, but found it hard to do. But turns out you’re just batshit crazy like everyone else in this family.” She’d laughed, then apologized. “I was sure it was schizophrenia,” her mother said, driving Hen back to upstate New York, “because of your uncle.

And that this is the beginning of a horrifying nightmare she may not live to escape. Then one night, when she comes face to face with Matthew in a dark parking lot, she realizes that he knows she’s been watching him, that she’s really on to him. The more Hen observes Matthew, the more she suspects he’s planning something truly terrifying. Hen knows because she’s long had a fascination with this unsolved murder-an obsession she doesn’t talk about anymore, but can’t fully shake either.Ĭould her neighbor, Matthew, be a killer? Or is this the beginning of another psychotic episode like the one she suffered back in college when she became so consumed with proving a fellow student guilty that she ended up hurting a classmate? The sports trophy looks exactly like one that went missing from the home of a young man who was killed two years ago. Finally, she’s found some stability and peace.īut when they meet the neighbors next door, that calm begins to erode as she spots a familiar object displayed on the husband’s office shelf. Hen (short for Henrietta) is an illustrator and works out of a studio nearby, and has found the right meds to control her bipolar disorder. Hen and her husband Lloyd have settled into a quiet life in a new house outside of Boston, Massachusetts. William Morrow Paperbacks Reprint edition (February 25, 2020)Ĭatching a killer is dangerous-especially if he lives next doorįrom the hugely talented author of The Kind Worth Killing comes an exquisitely chilling tale of a young suburban wife with a history of psychological instability whose fears about her new neighbor could lead them both to murder.

Before she knew him novel