Amy Myers is known for her short stories and historical novels featuring Victorian chef Auguste Didier and chimney sweep Tom Wasp. Her contemporary series feature ex-cop Peter Marsh and Daughter and classic car detective Jack Colby, and she is currently working on a new series starring Cara Shelley who runs a café in the grounds of stately home Tanton Towers.
Website: www.amymyers.net
Kia Abdullah is no stranger to the written word as she is well known for her earlier thrillers and for her career as a journalist. Her new novel, Those People Next Door, was highly acclaimed on its publication earlier this year and is now about to be released in paperback. Most of us have nightmares and most of us have neighbours too, but in this novel they are combined, creating a powerful and terrifying force.
The story begins so softly, so gently, with Salma Khatun and husband Bil moving up a social notch to the house of their dreams although they can ill afford it. But the dreams begin to vanish when having been sized up by all their new neighbours at a welcoming barbecue, one of them, Tom Hutton, decides to remove the anti-racist banner that the Khatuns’ son Zain has innocently displayed in their front garden. A small thing but Salma then puts the banner in her window resulting in the glass mysteriously being daubed with paint. The trouble begins. Zain has in the meanwhile become friendly with Tom’s son Jamie and Tom’s wife Willa only wants a quiet family life. Nevertheless, little by little tension with Tom increases, drawing in both families. It develops into a long and gripping legal battle where far more is at stake than either side envisaged when menace and hatred escalate from nightmare into physical action.
The story is divided into three parts, the build-up to breaking point, the legal case that follows and what follows that. With its simplicity of approach and the author’s dexterous handling of each tiny step towards each new twist and turn, Those People Next Door is a most readable novel.
