Rosamund Lupton

Sister is narrated as a letter from a woman to her dead sibling, investigating a death the police have already closed the file on, and it sold in very large numbers on the strength of that voice. Three Hours takes place across a school siege in Somerset in real time, cutting between a headmaster bleeding in a doorway, a class barricaded in a library and a mother outside. Lupton worked as a screenwriter before novels, and the books are structured tightly enough that the timing is part of the argument.