Suburbia lends itself beautifully to thrillers and mysteries as a setting—what better place to hide terrible secrets than on tree-lined streets and behind neighborly smiles? New releases focus on the dark side of domesticity, the isolation of suburban life, and the danger that waits just down the street.
A Death at the Party
Amy Stuart. Simon & Schuster, Mar. 2023
Picture a lavish summer garden party, and the host is holding court and brandishing a drink—not standing over a fresh corpse in a basement beneath the proceedings. In Stuart’s latest, a well-to-do wife and mother’s life threatens to unravel as the anniversary of a terrible event from her past rolls around, threatening the picture-perfect life she’s spent decades cultivating.
Locust Lane
Stephen Amidon. Celadon, Jan. 2023
Amidon explores the insidiousness of suburban affluence in a thriller centering on the death of a young woman named Eden Perry, whose bludgeoned body is found in a home in the wealthiest part of a New England town, and the powerful parents who circle the wagons against investigators to protect their teenage children, who were with Eden on the night she was murdered.
A Mother Would Know
Amber Garza. Mira, Dec.
Garza follows 2021’s Where I Left Her with a story about family, murder, and the betrayal of memory loss. When elderly widow Valerie’s adult son Hudson moves back in to help take care of her, a young woman is murdered just a stone’s throw from Valerie’s sprawling Victorian house, causing neighbors to suspect her brooding, mercurial son. Though she’s been having problems with memory lately, Valerie recalls disturbing instances from Hudson’s childhood that make her suspect he might have something terrible to hide. PW’s starred review said, “Garza keeps the fast-paced plot twists going into the book’s final pages.”
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Regrets Only
Kieran Scott. Gallery, Jan. 2023
After her career as a TV screenwriter in L.A. goes up in smoke, Paige Lancaster returns to her East Coast hometown with her young daughter Izzy in tow, determined to rebuild her life. She becomes enmeshed with the town’s Parent Booster Association, one of whose members happens to be her high school squeeze John. When John’s formidable wife Ainsley is murdered the night of a school fund-raiser, Paige is forced to put her sleuthing skills, developed while writing fictional detectives, to use.
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The Widow
Kaira Rouda. Thomas & Mercer, Dec.
This domestic political thriller follows Jody, the ruthlessly pragmatic wife of congressman Martin Asher, as she attempts to control the narrative following her husband’s apparent murder. When a journalist uncovers Martin’s many indiscretions, connecting them with the events surrounding his death, Jody must maneuver to keep Martin’s secrets—and her own—under wraps in order to keep her legacy safe from scandal.
