Peter Swanson, Faber & Faber

You can always rely on Peter Swanson to hit you up with a big dollop of crime thriller goodness and he’s on sparkling form with his latest. It begins with Hen and Lloyd who have just moved to a new neighbourhood in Massachusetts. At their first block party they meet up with Matthew and Mira, seemingly the only other childless couple in the vicinity. Mira invites them round for a dinner party and it turns out to be a fairly routine if not humdrum affair, until, that is, the inevitable house-tour. When they’re shown into Matthew’s study Hen notices something amiss and thinks this history teacher isn’t quite what he seems. Hen, meanwhile, has a past shot through with compilations, and these are going to prove difficult to overcome if she’s going to convince anyone to take her reservations about Matthew seriously. A taut psychological thriller featuring some electrifying encounters, this novel grabs you from the get-go and is right up there with Swanson’s previous best ‘The Kind Worth Killing’.