Peter Swanson writes thrillers and his last two, the only two I have read, are set in Boston and New England.
Her Every Fear is set on Beacon Hill, in Boston, where I used to teach, and it has a second strand of the story set in Belsize Park in London, near where I went to secondary school. How could I not read it?
The “Her” of the title is Kate Priddy, and she has arranged a flat swap with her cousin, Corbin Dell, who she has never met. Kate is all alone in the opulent flat in Boston. Then a neighbour disappears, who it turns out later has been murdered and Corbin is a suspect. Several creepy neighbours befriend Kate, but she suffers from some form of anxiety that may come from and although she lets them close, she is both nervous, but can’t step away. The net closes in, and Kate is in real danger that stems from a meeting Corbin had as an exchange student in London many years earlier.
As a writer, Swanson is ruthless. He draws a string around his characters and his readers until the bag is closed above their heads and there is almost no escape. For the readers who like tightly written thrillers with an impressive sense of place his books are perfect entertainments.
What first drew me to Noah Hawley’s current novel was the fact that the first two seasons of 
in the big city, in Melbourne, returns to his home town, Kiewarra, a drought-wracked, small country town, for the funeral of his close friend Luke Hadler, who has seemingly murdered his wife and son and then killed himself. This is a mystery, so nothing is that straight-forward, and the new local cop draws Aaron into the investigation. Many local characters resist his involvement. Partly because he moved away and partly because they believe that years before he was involved in the death of a teenage girl that Luke gave him a questionable alibi for. Much as the mystery and the characters draw the reader in, this is a vital novel for big city readers to encounter a vivid, contemporary examination of how hard life can be in the country–the land and weather don’t cooperate, the local authorities seem far away, and the urban centres don’t even notice or understand.
