Review: Your Closest Friend by Karen Perry

Hauled off the streets to safety during a terrorist attack on a London street as Karen Perry’s Your Closest Friend opens, radio producer Cara shares her most intimate secrets with her rescuer, Amy. When Amy, a young American woman, begins to worm her way into Cara’s life in the aftermath, Cara’s life begins to unravel in spectacular fashion. Previously the writing partnership of Karen Gillece and Paul Perry, ‘Karen Perry’ is now Gillece working alone, but the quality of the Karen Perry psychological thrillers remains undiminished. Your Closest Friend (Penguin Ireland) owes a considerable debt to Patricia Highsmith, being something of a blend of The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train, the tension ramping up as Cara and Amy narrate alternate chapters, the former tangled up in a cat’s-cradle of infidelity and deceit, the latter a lesbian sociopath who hears voices in her head. Some of the twists in the latter stages strain credulity, but readers who enjoy being wrong-footed by labyrinthine plotting will savour this to the very last page. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Times, along with reviews of new titles by Val McDermid, Megan Abbott, Tod Goldberg and Richard Anderson.