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
Gulp! I’ve just finished reading the debut novel and thriller The Quiet Tenant. It is not for the fainthearted. Clémence Michallon was born in Paris, has a master’s degree in journalism, writes for The Independent, and lives in the US. Now The Quiet Tenant proves that she is also a novelist here to stay.
Aidan Thomas has had a lot of women in his life – he killed most of them. One, who was forced by him to call herself Rachel, has been kept alive – if one can call it living. She was bound up for five years in a shed, until it suits him to use her as the ‘quiet tenant’ in his home. And then there’s Emily, owner of a local restaurant, who thinks Aidan is wonderful and grows closer and closer to him until.... And there’s Cecilia, Aidan’s thirteen-year-old daughter, for whom ‘Rachel’ has to groom herself as a ‘family friend’.
One remarkable facet of this novel is that the story is relayed only by the women themselves as they reveal the psychological impact of his crimes upon them. Not only do ‘Rachel’, Emily and Cecelia tell their horrific stories but briefly so do Numbers 1 to 8 of his previous victims The shadow of Aidan Thomas haunts them all to dramatic effect.
Cleverly constructed, well written and harrowing in the extreme from the very first page, this is an unforgettable debut. If this is a first novel, what’s the next going to be like? I dread to think – literally. Congratulations to Clémence Michallon, queen of the psychological thriller. We’ll be waiting.
