The House Guest by Mark Edwards

​⭐Publisher featured review

An accelerating, invigorating thriller, where each character comes under suspicion until your head spins.

The story is set in the United States, complete with Americanisms such as 'garbage', 'stoop', 'bathroom' and 'store', just to give a feel of the place. An English couple have the opportunity to house-sit for a couple they met on a cruise. When a woman turns up to stay, claiming that she knows the owners, it opens up a whole host of weirdness. Pretty soon she is missing along with the narrator's English girlfriend.

As the mystery unfolds there are beautiful people, glamour, murder and intrigue with a smattering of kookiness and folk who 'freak out'. All this enveloped by the nuances of behaviour, paranoia and insecurities within relationships, a sense of belonging and belief.

In America things are settled with guns, that's one of the reasons I'm not keen on American thrillers or adventure books so much. And Edwards, out of his normal habitat, still has to conform to that reality. So it was a nice touch to read this: 'A gun? I shook my head. "I'm English."'

Recommended. 

---

Published by Thomas & Mercer on 3 June 2020.
​Advance review copy supplied by the publisher.

​