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The best recent thrillers – review roundup

A Double Life

Charlotte Philby
Borough Press, £12.99, pp464

Charlotte Philby’s book is about choices, the ones we make and the ones we ignore. “How easy it would be to cross the line from which there was no return,” thinks her protagonist. Gabriela is a rising star at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who is drawn into counter-terrorism work: she is desperate to make her mark on this world, but she also has a boyfriend, Tom, and then a daughter, and then a son, and she is slowly shifted sideways, away from the promotion she had been promised. As she crosses line after line – first small ones, then bigger ones – she finds herself in an increasingly dangerous position, unable to ask anyone for help, unable to tell anyone the truth. Opening as Gabriela returns from a seven-month stint in Moscow, A Double Life also follows the investigations of local journalist Isobel, who believes she has witnessed a murder on Hampstead Heath. Philby, granddaughter of the notorious double agent Kim Philby, explores why a woman might find herself living two lives: Gabriela is gloriously dislikable, and easy to judge, but she is also terribly compelling, and her downwards spiral towards disaster is persuasive and absorbing.

Out of Time

David Klass
Michael Joseph, £12.99, pp384

The FBI has “300 dedicated federal agents, twice the number who had pursued the Unabomber” on the trail of the terrorist who stalks the pages of David Klass’s thriller. The Green Man, who has struck six times over the last two years, leaving not a single clue behind, is no run-of-the-mill bomber, however. Every target he destroys is one that threatens the environment, and after every strike, he writes to the papers, telling them of his “moral imperative to act on behalf of the human race before it’s too late”. He’s celebrated by environmentalists, despite the innocent people caught up in his bombings, and the FBI can’t get a handle on him at all. Klass’s race-to-the-finish-line tale follows the efforts of young data cruncher Tom Smith, who has a hunch about the Green Man’s identity. “The liberal media say he’s an environmental activist who wants to call attention to the way we’re destroying our own planet,” sneers Tom’s father; Tom himself is torn, agreeing with the Green Man’s motivations while wanting to stop the death of more civilians. Inspired by Klass’s conversations with his teenage daughter about climate change, this is a whale of a ride.

Finders, Keepers

Sabine Durrant
Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99, pp320

We learn early on from Durrant’s narrator, Verity, that Ailsa’s husband Tom is dead. And that he’s died rather gruesomely, suffocating after eating the hemlock that had been included with his dinner. “A fairytale couple, the Sun called them, and he was a handsome man, Tom Tilson, with foppish dark-brown hair, a broad jaw and blue eyes.” Ailsa is under investigation for his murder, and she’s staying meanwhile with Verity, her neighbour and friend. Verity is our guide to this journey, and she’s an extremely intriguing one, slowly unpeeling the layers to reveal her own dark past. Lonely and obsessive, she is intrigued by Ailsa and her family when they move next door; as they try to persuade her to clear out her overgrown garden, she watches and listens and inveigles her way into their lives, tutoring their young son, observing the way Tom treats his wife. Did Ailsa really kill Tom, or was it a mistake? Just how much is Verity hiding? A lexicographer, she picks over the meanings of words: “Mariticide, noun. From the Latin ‘maritus’ meaning husband plus ‘-cide’ from ‘caedere’, to cut, to kill.” An intelligent, twisty psychological thriller.

Cry Baby

Mark Billingham
Little, Brown, £14.99, pp448

What a treat. This is a prequel to Billingham’s excellent and long-running crime series, showing his protagonist Tom Thorne as a young detective sergeant in 1996, haunted by a horrific crime he couldn’t prevent, and desperate to find a seven-year-old boy who has just gone missing. It’s clear Billingham is having tons of fun with his timeline – there are lots of references to huge mobile phones (“a fancy toy for twats and the seriously minted, that was all”), plus Thorne’s scepticism about whether CCTV will ever “replace old-fashioned nous or shoe leather” and to the Euro 96 football championship that plays out as the investigation continues. But Billingham is, as ever, skilled at showing the pain at the heart of the crime, the mother whose son has vanished, the friend who took her eye off him for a minute, the hideousness of not knowing where your child might be. Cry Baby works as a way into the series for sure, but it’s even more entertaining for us old aficionados to see the origin story of Billingham’s hero, watching him become the man who would make his debut in Sleepyhead.

• To order A Double Life, Out of Time, Finders, Keepers or Cry Baby go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15