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A Novel of Crime
by Charlotte Link
Book Reviewed by:An immersive, atmospheric crime novel from the multi-million-copy bestselling author, Charlotte Link.
Carla Roberts lives alone in the top of a highrise building, frightened by the sound of the lift stopping and opening on her floor, with nobody getting out. Days later, she's found brutally murdered. Meanwhile Samson Segal, an unemployed thirty-something, has taken to spying on his neighbors, particularly beautiful and successful Gillian Ward.
When Gillian's daughter comes home to an empty, locked house, Samson takes her in but finds himself venting his anger in his diary when his good Samaritan actions go unappreciated, unaware that his suspicious sister-in-law cracked his password long ago. When Gillian's husband is then murdered in his own home, Samson comes under intense scrutiny but the only man making any progress on the case is the one who shouldn't be working on it. Yet he's the only one who believes Samson is innocent...
In addition to being a truly gripping thriller, The Watcher also offers genuine character development, as its central characters all evolve and grow as individuals even in the wake of the troubling events that bring them together. American readers can only hope that more of Link's work will soon be available in translation...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).
Thanks to authors like Jo Nesbo, Karin Fossum, and Henning Mankell, not to mention Stieg Larsson, American readers have become quite familiar with contemporary Scandinavian thrillers and novels of psychological suspense. As The Watcher demonstrates, however, the Nordic countries hardly have a monopoly on this genre, and in recent years several novels by contemporary German thriller writers have begun to hit the English-speaking market. Here are a few names to look for:
From left to right, top to bottom:
Petra Hammesfahr, Nele Neuhaus,
Andrea Maria Schenkel, Jan Costin Wagner
Petra Hammesfahr is a prize-winning author whose novels have garnered comparison to the works of Ruth Rendell and Patricia Highsmith. Hammesfahr's themes include...
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If you liked The Watcher, try these:
by Camilla Grebe
Published 2019
Brought together by a brutal murder, a psychological profiler who's lost her memory and a teenage boy with a fiercely guarded secret become unwitting, unlikely partners in this race to stop a killer.
by Phil Hogan
Published 2016
In the tradition of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley novels comes a deliciously unsettling tale of psychological suspense that delves into the mind of a man with a chilling double life.
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