Book Review of The People Watcher by Sam Lloyd

 

 

* * * * *

A wholly original and gripping thriller which shocks and surprises until the end.

(This review is based on a free review copy from the publisher via Net Galley UK.)

This is going to be a very positive review, not least because when I reviewed the author’s previous novel I suggested that it shared a few features with his first novel (which had some points of contact with one by John Fowles) and the next one needed a clean slate.

The People Watcher got that clean slate all right! It benefits from this.

Most of the story is seen through the eyes of a brain-damaged person and some of the tension comes from this character’s inability to really know her own next move or even face her past. The bulk of the tension, though, comes from an accelerating sequence of ever more fraught and frightening events in the present and revelations about the past. Some of the relationships and actions depicted in this novel are spectacularly unwise and unhealthy, but are realistic in that murder is a perverse response to any situation, especially when that situation is normal life. What Sam Lloyd gets so right is the bell-curve of perversity that follows such an inappropriate and disproportionate response, where everything goes from bad to worse for quite some time until a catastrophe allows normality to begin to force her way back in.

There are moral challenges, too, for the reader as well as the main protagonist (who strives to right serious wrongs with small acts of kindness and is shocked when darker methods seem to work.)

The People Watcher by Sam Lloyd is published by Random House UK on the 12^th of June 2023