Shari Lapena

Worked as a lawyer and then an English teacher before writing thrillers in her forties, and The Couple Next Door was the fourth manuscript, the first three unsold.

A baby goes missing from a house while the parents are at dinner next door, and Lapena spends the novel demonstrating that everyone involved has a reason to lie. The books move fast, the chapters are short, and the prose gets out of the way. She has published roughly one a year since and the formula has not worn out yet, partly because she keeps changing which character turns out to be unreliable.