Skip to main content

Book Review: The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood


When Collette moves into 23 Beulah Grove in South London, she is on the run and just wants to blend in. The other renters have their own stories of why they're living in this dilapidated home, dealing with a repulsive landlord, and mostly trying to stay under the radar. Unbeknownst to all but one, a killer lives among them. We know this because the novel begins with one of the others talking with the authorities about the murderer. We just don't know who he is.

The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood was described by Steven King as "scary as hell," but I'm not sure I agree. Disturbing, gross and suspenseful, yes. You definitely can't have a weak stomach reading this one; the gore factor is through the roof in several places. But while it is unnerving, it isn't edge-of-your-seat scary for the most part. There are several gripping scenes, but I found the focus of the novel to be more on the characters than the scare factor. And being someone who loves character-driven novels, this was great.

Collette is the most developed, at least at first, but Marwood gives each character a clear persona. Cher is the young runaway who steals to make the rent each month. Vesta is the pensioner who has lived in the house her whole life. Thomas is the quiet, boring one. Gerard is the divorced music teacher. Houssein is the political refugee from Iran. And Roy Preese is the disgusting landlord who loves to wield his power over his renters. It's an eclectic set of characters who eventually come together, reluctantly, to try to save themselves.

The Killer Next Door is an engaging read that I had a hard time putting down. There was plenty of suspense, not only with regard to the killer, but also with the many parallel storylines going on. If you can get past all the body parts, the bodily fluids and the stench that Marwood infuses into the home, it's an excellent mystery straight through to the end.

My rating: 4.5/5

Visit the author's website to read an excerpt

This review was written based on a copy of The Killer Next Door that I received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for stopping by! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Popular posts from this blog

Getting back to blogging

It seems that blogging has dropped to the bottom of my list for the past year, and was pretty low for the year or two prior to that. I love to read, and am continuing to do so, but as my regular readers know I haven't been around much. My last blog post was almost a year ago!!

There are many things that have taken me away from blogging. Work has been much more challenging and interesting these past few years, but that means I really don't want to get back on the computer when I get home at night - or on the weekends.

Family life has been more busy with kids having multiple activities in the evenings, leaving little time to just hang out and write about the books that I read.

I will admit to a bit of a Facebook addiction, which means way too much time spent scrolling through my newsfeed instead of doing something more productive. This is one of the things I'm working on and hoping that this will free up some time for getting back to the blog.

Overall, life is good. Work is …
Post a Comment
Read more

Banned Books Week: Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park

This is the end of Banned Books Week and unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of time to write about banned books this year. But I did want to include at least one post about it, so today I wanted to share one of the book series that it seems most people are surprised to find on the list: Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park.

According to Wikipedia:
The Junie B. Jones series came in at #71 on the American Library Association's list of the Top 100 Banned or Challenged Books from 2000-2009. Reasons cited are poor social values taught by the books and Junie B. Jones not being considered a good role model due to her mouthiness and bad spelling/grammar. This is an interesting example of a banned book. Many times there are serious, controversial topics featured in books that are challenged. Things like homosexuality, drugs, vulgar language, etc. You can actually understand why people may not want their children to read those books, and why they may challenge their inclusion in school libra…
10 comments
Read more

April Reading Review

Where exactly did April go? I swear it was just the middle of March and now it's May. Once again, I'm going to provide a quick review of each of the books I read last month. For the last two weeks of the month, I participated in the Spring Into Horror Readathon hosted by Michelle at Seasons of Reading. The only rule was that you had to read at least one book that was horror, thriller, etc. I read one book that qualified. With the exception of the first book in my list, the books I mention below were read during the readathon


My book club's May selection was Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. I had started reading this nonfiction book about the author's work representing men, women and children who were on death row in March but finished the book in April. This is an eye-opening story that everyone at my book club discussion agreed should be required reading for law schools and police officers and even legislators who are making the laws related to judgements. I learned to…
3 comments
Read more