Need a Distraction? These Thrillers Will Have You on the Edge of Your Seat

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/books/review/suspense-thrillers.html

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THRILLER ROUNDUP

by Sarah Lyall

I’ve always wanted to be the Henry Fonda of my jury, single-handedly exonerating the falsely accused defendant by the quiet force of my elegant arguments. But unlike in “12 Angry Men,” the case at the heart of Graham Moore’s THE HOLDOUT (Random House, 322 pp., $28) is not so clear-cut.

Moore’s heroine is Maya Seale, who a decade ago convinced her own jury to acquit a teacher of murdering the young, rich student to whom he’d been suspiciously close. The case is now considered an O.J.-level miscarriage of justice, with virtually everyone, including Maya’s fellow jurors, certain that they let a guilty man walk free.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the infamous case, a true-crime podcast has rashly invited the jurors to reunite at the hotel where they spent many months sequestered in 2009. Happily for the plot of a book that is part courtroom drama, part amateur-detective procedural and part civic lesson, the jurors agree.

But what a terrible idea it turns out to be, especially when one of them is killed, and Maya — the victim’s former lover — becomes the chief suspect. Moore, the author of two earlier novels and the screenplay for “The Imitation Game,” cooks up a spicy stew of intrigue replete with buried secrets and unexpected motives.

Moore also takes us back in time into the jury room for a bracing reminder of how hard it is to sit in judgment over matters of life and death. Wait for the moment when the jury reconvenes for one last time, like retired grifters meeting up for a final job, to render a private verdict with profound moral repercussions. That’s some criminal justice.

“I mix up movies and memory,” says Marissa Dahl in Elizabeth Little’s PRETTY AS A PICTURE (Viking, 338 pp., $27). A film editor who can’t much tell where stories end and life begins, Marissa is also prickly, hyperarticulate, suspicious, neurotic, surprisingly tough and very funny — the ideal narrator for a book that pays homage to Hollywood and classic detective fiction.

Hired by an eccentric director to work on a true-crime movie about a long-ago murder, Marissa travels to an island off the coast of Delaware where she’s ordered to relinquish her phone, talk to no one and remain isolated in her room when not on set. No one will tell her why her predecessor was fired, or why accidents keep befalling the cast and crew.

Then the actress playing the victim turns up murdered herself, and it looks as if Marissa is next on the killer’s list. Joined by a delightful pair of preteen Nancy Drew wannabes, Marissa sets out to solve the case, wearing her love of film like a shield and wielding it like a weapon. Numerous films are referred to by name throughout; others I deduced myself, as when Marissa manages to allude (in her head) to scenes in “Kill Bill” and “Rear Window” while someone attempts to kill her.

The book celebrates women who have each other’s backs and put their friends ahead of their men. It is also a valentine to the intoxications of filmmaking and film-viewing. Marissa speaks with real love about corralling disparate scenes into a graceful and coherent narrative. “An editor — that is to say, a film editor — isn’t really so different from a detective,” she says. Or a novelist.

The prolifically ingenious Sarah Pinborough, whose “Behind Her Eyes” chronicled a deranged love triangle with a rationality-defying last-minute surprise, has produced another twisty book about tricky characters behaving badly: DEAD TO HER (Morrow, 388 pp., $27.99), set among the upper crust of Savannah, Ga.

The heroine, the beautiful, 34-year-old Marcie, is married to the older, richer and slightly dodgy Jason, who left his first wife for her after their torrid affair. Marcie’s insecurity is stirred by the sudden arrival of the even younger and hotter Keisha, the new wife of Jason’s recently widowed (and not very bereaved, tbh) 60-something-year-old boss, William Radford IV.

Keisha radiates lust, just not toward her physically unappealing husband. (“Why couldn’t Billy just die?” she wonders.) Mysteries abound. We’re not sure if Keisha is merely an evil gold-digging opportunist, or a vulnerable ingénue being driven insane by her toxic family history and her husband’s judgmental friend group.

Also, whom is Jason secretly calling in the middle of the night? Why is Marcie so desperate to hide the story of what happened to some man named Jonny, and who is Jonny? Can people be cursed? And finally, the million dollar question surrounding the death that propels this labyrinthine tale: Was it a heart attack, or did someone really lace his coconut water with antifreeze?

There are shades of “Rebecca” and “Body Heat.” There are drug-fueled raves that were possibly orgies, though memories are foggy. There is a scary old seeress who pops up at regular intervals to hurl paranormal invective at the characters.

“I don’t think I’ve ever worked a case where my problem was having too many suspects who could all easily be guilty,” a detective says. “The issue I have is — and don’t take this personally — that you’re all such truly atrocious people.”

For readers who like this sort of thing, and I am one of them, Pinborough doesn’t reveal the answer to the biggest mystery — who is the very worst villain of the tale? — until the very end.

Like many couples, Will and Sadie Foust have hit a rough patch. He cheated on her. She lost her job as a surgeon after inexplicably walking out of an O.R. as her patient went into cardiac arrest. Their son got expelled for showing up to school with an eight-inch knife.

So begins Mary Kubica’s THE OTHER MRS. (Park Row, 359 pp., $26.99). Hoping to repair their marriage, the Fousts have moved to a creepy, crumbling house on a remote island in Maine that once belonged to Will’s sister, before she hanged herself in the attic. Her angry, gothed-out daughter now greets them in a T-shirt that says “I want to die.”

Even worse for their marital equanimity, a mom down the road is murdered soon after they arrive. Kubica, the author of “The Good Girl” and a skillful practitioner of psychological suspense, keeps the reader off balance by interspersing Sadie’s (unreliable) narration with those of several alarming satellite characters whose connections to the main story are not immediately clear: Camille, Will’s sexually voracious and mentally unhinged lover; and Mouse, a lonely, valiant little girl being abused by her stepmother.

All will be revealed in time, including the truth about Will, who spends much of the book trying to make amends to his wife. Or so we think, until he gets some narrative time of his own.

“I’ve got empathy down to a science,” he says. “Eye contact, active listening. … Avoid judgment. I could do it in my sleep. It never hurts to cry a little, too.”