Taking a walk on the dark side of the street

ONE cannot survive on poetry alone. I have also devoured five crime thrillers, because so many books are done in this genre and their publishers bring them to my door. In addition to high literature and poetry, I never say no to a noir.

The novel The Damages is set in two periods of time: the present (2020) and the past (the winter of 1998). The narrator, Ross, is at university in Toronto. She likes her roommate, a bluestocking with a good heart, but feels she is not pretty or cool enough to be seen with.

There is a snowstorm and the students left on campus are all trapped in one woman's dorm. No one is allowed to move around on their own, there is a buddy system and Ross's roommate, Megan, is her buddy. So she drags her along one night to a drunken party. When Megan wants to leave, Ross is absorbed with the attention of a boy and ignores her. Ross takes the boy back to her dorm room and leaves Megan with her friends. When Megan arrives at their dorm door, she asks her to sleep elsewhere. Megan goes off and in another room is molested. She disappears for some days and everyone feels Ross hasn't done her buddy bit for her.

Years later, Ross runs into Lukas again, a cool dude from those varsity days, and they start dating and get married. He's now a famous young adult author. Then scandal breaks: Megan accuses him of getting into her bed and forcing himself on her on the night of the storm. Ross has to look with new eyes at her husband and father of her child, and her actions at the time. It's a gripping domestic noir full of psychological drama.

The Damages by Genevieve Scott is published by Verve and costs R406 at Amazon SA .

This is a kind of comedy of errors and is also very exciting. Emily is British, 29 and determined to prove to the father who had abandoned her and her mother when she was little that she has made a success of her life. She is about to marry her childhood sweetheart, but he suddenly and without much explanation breaks off the relationship and moves out of their flat. Her life is in pieces.

Meanwhile, her father, who is struggling financially in America where he now lives, decides to visit her and reconcile with her, mostly to curry favour with his wealthy mother with a view to a loan. He is a charming con artist and throws himself headlong into Emily's wedding preparations. She can't face acknowledging that her engagement had been broken off.

Meanwhile, his mother, Emily's grandmother, is clearly the victim of cybercrime: She has met someone online who has won her heart. She believes he's her soulmate and has already “lent" him a lot of money. He's supposedly very wealthy, but his cash flow isn't great and his son needs expensive surgery, apparently.

It's a disaster that slowly unfolds and the reader can't look away. It's also funny, in a grim humorous way.

That's Just Perfect by Nicola Gill is published by FSC and costs R290 at Amazon SA .

This novel is classic domestic noir; the cover in blue and yellow speaks for itself, ominously. Nancy and her boyfriend, Felix, have to move to a smaller flat in London because the restaurant she had opened during Covid went belly-up. He is infinitely patient with Nancy, who seems to have mental health issues. She hears voices and sometimes feels overwhelmed.

They move into an old house that has been divided into flats. The neighbours are strange, unsavoury and the walls are thin. Then their new neighbour, Kira Mullen, is found dead in her flat. She has hanged herself, the police conclude and close the case. But some details bother Nancy and once she becomes obsessed with something, there is no stopping her. She is admitted to an institution once again and Felix smothers her with love and care, to the extent that she can barely breathe. The reader begins to look sceptically at Felix. He tells everyone that Nancy is fragile and confused, and not to be trusted.

She doesn't let go and eventually wins the trust of a policewoman, who reopens the case. It's highly suspenseful; an extremely successful thriller.

The Last Days of Kira Mullen by Nicci French is published by Simon & Schuster UK and costs R635 at Amazon SA.

This suspenseful story is also unsettling. In 2016, eight-year-old Daisy Mason disappeared from her parents' home in Oxford. There was enough evidence to convict her mother of her murder and she is still in prison eight years later. Then Daisy's DNA turns up at a recent murder scene – is she still alive?

The reader is treated to diary entries by Daisy, now a teenager, very much alive, as sharp as a tack, ruthless and vicious. It becomes clear that the brilliant eight-year-old hated her parents and meticulously planned her disappearance. But who had helped her?

DCI Adam Fawley and his team work on the case. It's a psychological thriller that grips and horrifies the reader.

Making a Killing by Cara Hunter is published by Hemlock Press and costs R486 at Amazon SA .

Here is a novel with many facets and nuances. It begins in Kenya during the time of the Mau-Mau uprising. A Kenyan couple's land is expropriated and the woman flees without her child. Years later the child, Rehema, who was raised by missionaries and taken to England, goes looking for her mother back in Kenya. Rehema now has a daughter, Diana, a policewoman. Detective Inspector Diana Walker is leading a murder case: The head and limbs of a school principal were found in a filing cabinet on the grounds of a demolished school.

The plot thickens. The principal was corrupt and an embezzler. A teacher who was making a difference was undermined and driven off by him and his sidekick. She had health problems and was found dead in her flat. But was it from natural causes?

Diana doesn't think so. Then she discovers that the teacher was a member of her mother's book club, The Black Sistahs. Her search takes her into Sheffield's dark underbelly, with laws of its own.

It's extremely suspenseful and also character- and relationship-driven. I highly recommend it.

The Day of the Roaring by Nina Bhadreshwar is published by Hemlock Press and costs R510 at Amazon SA.

What are we listening to?

Leonard Cohen sings “The Future":

♦ VWB ♦

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