Two strangers meet in an airport-bar and during their conversation the small matter of killing someone comes up.
If this plot does sound familiar to you, you may have read Strangers on a train, because the author must have gotten inspired by Patricia Highsmith´s novel. A book, which I loathed with all of my heart, btw. And after reading this I felt a reasonable amount of doubt concerning this book:
... [she] closed her book, placing it faceup on the bar by her purse. The Two Faces of January. By Patricia Highsmith.
"How´s your book?"
"Not one of her best."
I took from this that Peter Swanson considers Strangers on a Train being on of Highsmith´s better works, so after reading this I really expected to dislike the entire book. But after reading the first chapters I was pleasently surprised that I have been in the wrong, because this is a top-notch thriller.
The narrative structur is very similar to the likes of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. The chapters are alternating between different characters, which gives you an insight to the story and the characters from different point of views. As this is a story about plotting a murder it shouldn´t come as a surprise that the characters in this novel are of the sociopathic kind, but Swanson manages to create some messed-up people who you are going to root for (even if you don´t want to).
This book is full of desceptions and there are some nasty twist-and-turns that I didn´t see coming and I´m always pleasently suprised if a book manages to surprise me. One word of advice: avoid the table of content, because it is a spoiler in itself.
I do have one minor complain, though. In the end there are to many twist and turns and the story became to far out there at one point. I had to suspend my disbelief quite a bit in the end. But overall I really enjoyed this crime novel.
9
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