THRILLERS | Daily Mail Online

THE RECOVERY OF ROSE GOLD

by Stephanie Wrobel

(Michael Joseph £14.99, 352 pp)

This chilling thriller tells a haunting story of reconciliation, obsession and revenge. Rose Gold Watts believed she was ill until she was 18, when it was revealed that her mother Patty had deliberately been making her sick.

She hadn’t needed the feeding tube, the surgeries or the wheelchair that had defined her young life. Five years later, her mother has been released from the prison sentence she received for harming her daughter.

But Rose Gold decides to put the past behind her, and invites her mother to live with her and her new baby son Adam. Will Patty try the same tricks on her new grandson, or will the reconciliation hold?

With genuine menace seeping from every twist and turn, the two central characters inhabit every page with captivating ferocity, and the denouement is worthy of Patricia Highsmith at her finest: quite superb.

THE HOLDOUT

by Graham Moore (Orion £12.99, 336pp)

The Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Imitation Game has produced one of the best legal thrillers in recent years. It is as elegant and gripping as Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent.

The premise is simple. Ten years ago, Bobby Nock, a teacher, was tried for the murder of 15-year-old Jessica Silver, heiress to a billion-dollar fortune.

She had vanished on her way home from school and a series of explicit messages revealed that she had been in a relationship with Nock. It looks like an open-and-shut case, and the jury is on the brink of finding him guilty when one young juror, Maya Seale, convinces them that Nock is innocent and they acquit.

A decade on, one of those original jurors is found dead, and Maya — now a defence attorney — becomes the prime suspect.

She knows she didn’t do it, so one of the other jurors must be the killer, but which? It makes for high-octane drama with a string of corkscrew twists.

DEEP STATE

by Chris Hauty (S&S £12.99, 384 pp)

This debut introduces ex-army veteran and accomplished boxer Hayley Chill — a distinctly unlikely woman to be found working as an intern to Peter Hall, Chief of Staff at the White House.

She’s older, fiercer and far more determined than the privileged young men and women who make up her peers. But when she discovers the body of her boss on his kitchen floor, apparently dead from a heart attack, she senses that something is amiss.

Working alone, unsure who to trust, she uncovers a malign conspiracy deep in the heart of government that is targeting the President. Demonstrating extraordinary courage, Hayley sets out to block the planned assassination, without really knowing who she’s fighting and what power they have.

Compelling, and with a stunning double twist, it would make a fine film — which presumably was Hauty’s idea.

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