3 New Thrillers Fueled by Obsession and Blackmail

Beautiful Ugly

By Alice Feeney

Obsession, romantic and otherwise, is the dominant theme of this month’s thrillers, whose characters often live on the edge of madness. Let’s start with Feeney’s BEAUTIFUL UGLY (Flatiron, 295 pp., $28.99). Feeney is known for pulling jaw-dropping surprises on her readers, and in her latest novel lulls us into believing that we’re reading a straightforward missing-person mystery. Abby Goldman, an investigative journalist in England, is driving home and talking to her husband, a novelist named Grady Green, when she stops to help a woman lying in the road. She never returns, and though her car turns up, she’s not in it.

A year later, distraught and running out of money as he struggles to write his next book, Grady is offered what appears to be the perfect antidote to his troubles: the chance to live rent-free in a writer’s cottage on Amberly (pop. 25), a tiny island in the Scottish Highlands. “Rest, walk, read, sleep … and who knows, maybe you might even be able to write,” his agent says.

The cottage is cozy and the island idyllic (and without cell service or the internet), but many things are off. The map that greets visitors is marked by a red triangle saying YOU ARE NOT HERE. Under the floorboards of his new home, Grady finds what appears to be bones from a human hand. The islanders are perversely vague about the return ferry schedule. And why does Grady keep thinking he sees his wife?

The book branches into unexpected directions on multiple fronts that are too weird to describe here; it’s better to relax and just go with it.

Alert readers will notice that the chapter titles are all oxymorons: “Passive-Aggressive,” “Silent Scream,” “Innocent Criminal” and — this is an important clue to the unreliability of the narration — “Happily Married.”