From Girl on the Train to Girl in the Spider’s Web – a recognize back on a year that lived up to the hypeBooks that arrive on a tide of chatter about vast advances,foreign sales and film rights often don’t provide an internal narrative to match the external one. But, in a welcome plot twist this year, or two talked-up debuts justified the hype.
Disproving the usual rule that thrillers with the word “girl” in the title are merely cynical attempts to catch the eye of Gillian Flynn fans,The Girl on the Train (Doubleday) by Paula Hawkins is an ideal solution for those seeking immersive distraction on a beach, plane or indeed train, and from which the sozzled heroine may or may not hold witnessed a murder in a house backing on to the tracks. And Renee Knight’s Disclaimer (Doubleday) is an inventive and troubling literary puzzle that begins,startlingly, with a woman being sent a novel that appears to fictionalise a secret part of her life record.
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Source: theguardian.com