Until It’s Over

Narrated by buff, beautiful Astrid Bell, the first part of this engaging thriller from husband-wife writing team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French (Losing You ) sets up the puzzle pieces, red herrings and all. Astrid shares a large decrepit London house with six roommates, who include a nondescript drifter, a lackadaisical drug dealer and a promiscuous lawyer. Hours after Astrid, a bike messenger, collides with a neighbor’s car door on her way home, the neighbor is found dead in the first of what develops into a series of deaths to which Astrid is somehow linked. The second part snaps the picture together in a villain’s how-I-did-it play-by-play. Despite this big half-time reveal, the suspense never falters—perhaps due to the wise decision to leave the bad guy unsympathetic at every turn. Justice-hungry readers will enjoy watching the net constrict around the criminal. The unusual two-part construction injects freshness into an otherwise ordinary plot. (Mar.)