The Other Side of the Door

At the start of this pitch-perfect thriller from British author French, the husband-wife team of Sean French and Nicci Gerard, band singer Bonnie finds her “summer fling” boyfriend and fellow band member, Hayden, dead on the floor of a friend's London apartment. She proceeds to hide the corpse and obliterate every sign of her presence at the crime scene. This course of action is, predictably, full of pitfalls. Hayden's well-known involvement with other women could have provided Bonnie a motive for murder. To complicate matters, at least one more person appears to have altered the crime scene. Told in a tantalizing series of flashbacks, the narrative draws you into the inner world of the protagonist, a “tough cookie” who nevertheless endures a relationship that's so abusive the reader is never quite sure that she did not, in fact, snap. French (Until It's Over ) takes the time to tease out individual characters to a degree seldom seen in crime fiction, saving the final plot twist for the last page. (May)