I'd Like a Side of Nausea With That, Please: The Killer Next Door

The Killer Next Door

by Alex Marwood

Alex Marwood’s gristly thriller The Killer Next Door holds back no punches when it comes to the grimier, slimier aspects of humanity.  A group of residents in South London rent rooms from “The Landlord,” a portly man who has no qualms about invading personal space.  The residents – Vesta, Hossein, Collette, Cher, Thomas, and Gerard – all have their quirks, of course, but the most interesting have to be Thomas, Collette, and Cher.

Thomas is referred to as “The Lover,” a quiet, pensive man who also happens to be a serial killer.  The pungent odors from his hobby of mummifying the women he “loves” permeate through the old house; the residents dismiss it as odd, but not alarming.  Thomas presents one side to the world: a hard-working, sensitive guy who is eager to help his neighbors.  Inside of his apartment, however, he engages in some rather distasteful habits – let’s just say those habits regularly clog up the drains.  Marwood does not shy away from vivid descriptions of Thomas’s diversions; for instance: “Jecca left the house in a series of carrier bags, flesh falling from bone like a five-hour pot roast…Katrina, her body cavities cleared more studiously, was a steep learning curve.  His incision, down the front of the abdomen the way a pathologist would do it, left the trunk loose and floppy, and her nose was ruined by his clumsy attempts to remove the brain with the crochet hook. The parichistic entry, via a slit in the left-hand side, though it means having to plunge himself arm-deep in viscera, produces a neater, more human-shaped final product” (93).

Collette, also known as Lisa, is on the run from her former boss after she accidentally witnesses a horrifying incident.  Three years and a duffel bag of money later, she stumbles upon 23 Beulah Grove.  Collette only wants to keep a quiet profile and periodically visit her mother in the nursing home; unwittingly, she is drawn into a series of crimes and intrigues far beyond her imagination.

Cher drinks, smokes, and steals; her days pass by in a yellow haze of fear, hunger, and longing.  She is only fifteen years old and is determined not to return to the foster home, even if it means robbing men much larger and stronger than her.  Her heart, though, is pure, and she forms an unlikely friendship with Collette and Vesta.

When a culminating event brings the residents together, they learn more than they bargained for about some of their neighbors.  Marwood is a master at sketching out characters, then filling them in subtly with unique details.  If you can handle a bit of gristle and fat, then definitely dive into this contemporary thriller fiction.

My only qualm is that there is a plethora of British terms throughout the novel – of course, that makes sense since the novel is set in London.  At times it was distracting and frustrating to not know what certain terms meant in context…but that is my own failing, not Marwood’s.