The Crooked House: A Novel

by Christobel Kent

Overview

In the chilling tradition of Daphne du Maurier and with the acuity of Kate Atkinson comes a haunting, psychological thriller about one woman’s search for the truth about her past through a closed community full of dark secrets.

Alison is as close to anonymous as you can get: she has no ties and no home, and her only anchors are her boyfriend and her small backroom job in publishing. Which is exactly how she wants it. Because once, Alison was a teenager named Esme who lived in a remote, dilapidated house by a bleary estuary with her parents and three siblings. One night something terrible happened in the family’s crooked house, leaving Alison the only survivor. In trying to escape its horror, she moves away from the village, changes her name, and cuts herself off from her past.

An invitation to a wedding in her hometown, however, brings her back for the first time since she fled. And soon Alison realizes that the events of that night left their awful mark not just on her but on the entire village, and she begins to suspect that all the residents might somehow be implicated in her family’s murder.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250117908
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	01/10/2017
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Christobel Kent was born in London and was educated at Cambridge. She has lived variously in Essex, London, and Italy. Her childhood included several years spent on a Thames sailing barge in Maldon, Essex, with her father, stepmother, three siblings, and four step-siblings. She now lives in both Cambridge and Florence with her husband and five children.

Editorial Reviews

Compulsive, unsettling and scary as hell.”—Sunday Mirror (London)

“A taut psychological thriller, loaded with mood, and a puzzle tricky enough to keep you guessing to the final page....Kent’s book is a delightful reminder that absorbing and clever crime novels still exist.”—The Washington Post

“A weird, excellent literary thriller, equal parts psychological profile and twisty, nasty plot.”—Carmen Maria Machado, NPR

“A chilling psychological thriller featuring a claustrophobic English seaside town, a heroine the sole survivor of a family massacre, and her intriguing relationship with an older, slightly dominating man....Comparisons to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca are apt.” —Victoria Caplinger, Library Journal (starred review)

“The Crooked House is a high-strung thriller set in a small community unwilling to acknowledge a past....Christobel Kent writes with assurance, pulling emotion from her characters and readers alike, and keeping the tension high. She has a rare knack for the eerie.” —Book Reporter

"A suspenseful ride with a gutsy heroine."—Publishers Weekly

“Demands to be devoured in one sitting.”—Joanne Finney, Good Housekeeping (London)

“A Daphne du Maurier set-up, but updated, influenced by Agatha Christie, too, and transposed to the coastal Suffolk of P. D. James. While Kent handles her mystery plot and large ensemble adroitly, what is most memorable is the atmosphere of the novel’s estuarine world, where everything seems muddy, shifting and treacherous.”—John Dugdale, The Sunday Times (London)

“A tense, gripping thriller, and utterly compulsive. I loved it.”—S. J. Watson, author of Before I Go to Sleep

From the Publisher

The Gothic thriller is a treacherous genre, but Christobel Kent does a nice job balancing the requisite features of dreamy romance and eerie atmosphere in The Crooked House.

The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio

11/02/2015
In this haunting if flawed standalone from British author Kent (A Florentine Revenge), the former Esme Grace, now living in London under a new legal identity as Alison, is slowly building the semblance of a normal life. Somehow, she has managed to survive the slaughter of her family when she was 14 in the Essex village of Saltleigh—but now a promising romance forces her back to the village. Though awakening the traumatic memories she has struggled so long to repress is the last thing Alison wants, she fears that if she refuses to accompany her older lover, Paul Bartlett, to the wedding of Morgan Carter, his former flame, in Saltleigh, the relationship is doomed. Little does Alison realize that much graver dangers await, such as her discovery of evidence that casts a startling new light on her long-ago trauma. This psychological thriller falters down the homestretch under the weight of too many unbelievable plot twists, but until then this is a suspenseful ride with a gutsy heroine. Agent: Victoria Hobbs, A.M. Heath (U.K.). (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 10/01/2015
What's not to love about a chilling psychological thriller featuring a claustrophobic English seaside town, the heroine the sole survivor of a family massacre, and her intriguing relationship with an older, slightly dominating man? Comparisons to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca are apt for Kent's ("Sandro Cellini" mysteries) most recent stand-alone novel. Alison (formerly Esme) lives quietly in London, connecting with few people and drawing little attention to herself, having changed her name after her family's murder a decade before. Her relationship with Paul is the longest she's had, in no small part because she asks him no questions about his personal life, and expects from him the same. When he invites her to a former girlfriend's wedding in her old hometown, she does her best to dodge the invitation but can't quite manage. The backstory is delivered piecemeal, and Alison's memories of the night her family was slaughtered by her father haunt the atmosphere, lending a fully satisfying air of menace. VERDICT Improbable, grim, disturbing fun—highly recommended for fans of the genre.—Victoria Caplinger, Durham, NC

Library Journal

2015-09-23
Thirteen years later, a young woman who survived the slaughter of her family returns to the scene of the crime. Her name was Esme, and she was nearly 14. She had a mum and a dad, 8-year-old twin sisters, and a big brother named Joe—until the night she went down from her bedroom and found them all shot with a rifle. Now her name is Alison. She works in accounting at a publishing house in London and has no family at all, except a father in an institution—a vegetable after the botched suicide attempt that followed the murders. Kent's (The Killing Room, 2015, etc.) latest psychological thriller opens as Alison's boyfriend, Paul, invites her to attend a wedding in her old hometown of Saltleigh. " 'The wedding's on Saturday but I thought we'd go a few days ahead of time. Tuesday,' said Paul, his voice warm now, reassured. 'Make a, you know, a little holiday of it.' " It won't be much of a holiday, actually, as the many dark secrets of this "poxy little dump" of a village spill out and new crimes begin to pile up as soon as they arrive. Alison's tragedy was one of many: there was a baby who died in an electrical fire, a boy killed in a hit-and-run, a girl with leukemia, a pedophile, an assortment of drunks and suicides. As soon as Alison gets to town and her cover begins to crumble, she runs into her old best friend, the detective who investigated the case, and other townspeople who pop in to offer clues and accusations. Just about everyone knows things about Alison's family that she does not. Meanwhile, her boyfriend has a disturbingly close friendship with the bride-to-be. Bleak, suspenseful writing keeps the momentum high despite a surfeit of characters and contrivances.

Kirkus Reviews