The People Next Door by Tony Parsons

"They Know Your Secret"... But do you know theirs? This gripping paranoia thriller is so packed with story you will never deduce what the heck is actually going on. This is a modern thriller without realism but impressively twisted.

Lana and her husband Roman move to the idyllic Cotswold countryside after a brutal home invasion in London.

Castle Gardens is a closed community in a quiet old two-street town on the river.

Lana is disturbed by onlookers gawking at her new home, discovering it is because a family was murdered there; a husband killed his wife and son, then shot himself.

The neighbors have all the gossip: Sally, the elderly flower child; Willow, the ex-model who married a tech millionaire; Krissy, who gave up a financial career for her husband; and Ben, who is raising a son after his wife ran off with the yoga instructor.

Lana and Roman are welcomed in. The local gardener will fix their overgrown garden, and there is private security. Oddly, they find a hidden 'safe' room in their home filled with surveillance monitors, not to mention the claw marks in the hardwood floors.

In the local manor house lives an Oxford history professor and his wife, who is suffering from Alzheimer's. When a local boy from the nearby council flats breaks into Professor Hall's manor and steals some silver, security persues him and runs him over with a van, leaving him in a coma. Lana is sure it was deliberate.

She also discovers wife abuse and extramarital affairs, and feels strongly that Ben's wife did not run off, but was killed and buried under their empty, broken pool. So plagued, in the middle of the night she goes out and digs.

Everyone, including the police, placate her with cloying sympathy. It looks like we are in Stepford Wives territory when her husband begins medicating her into a stupor - as Lana finds out Roman is destroying CCTV footage and knew Professor Hall long before they moved there.

Enough twists for a few thrillers, but this is not even what this thriller is about.

There is a deeper story you can never guess at.

Thrillers are about plot and not reality, so suspend your judgement and go for the ride.

Tony Parsons was a UK music journalist and bestselling author since his number one Man and Boy in 1999, followed by Man and Wife, The Family Way, and One For My Baby. He moved into thriller territory with seven acclaimed novels in the DC Max Wolfe detective series. The People Next Door stands alone.

2022 / Hardcover / 448 pages