This book kept me interested, and I really liked how it all came together in the end. Warning, there are many revolting sections that make your stomach turn, so don't read if you're easily disgusted.

I våras läste jag Marwoods Onda flickor och blev väldigt förtjust i hennes sätt att skriva. Därför blev jag glad när hennes nästa bok i stort sett redan var på väg. Nu är även den läst och jag tror jag kan ha hittat en ny favorit. Läs mer på http://bokslut.blogspot.se/2014/11/granne-med-doden-av-alex-marwood.html

This isn’t really a thriller, although it might be classified as one. That could be disappointing to some readers, but not to me. It had elements of humor, more than the usual dark humor of most thrillers, but not enough to rate as a comedy. I really enjoyed the mashup.

I listened to this mystery and while the reader was excellent, the book was quite nasty in places. It was just a bit too viscerally gross for my tastes. The actual mystery was just ok but the cast of characters was colorful and excellent.

Stylistically, I found this book engaging and enjoyed the reading experience overall. However, it's about 200 pages in when the first significant plot action occurs, and it never reaches a point where it's particularly thrilling, suspenseful, or mysterious. The perspective shift with each chapter change did make it fun and engaging for the most part, but ultimately, the Faulkner technique isn't pushed to its full potential. I found the characters to be frustratingly flat for how much time the book spent on exposition.

A solid 4 stars. It would have been 5 but there was some really graphic description that made my stomach churn.

I am having such luck with authors lately! After finding the joy that was Ruth Ware, I was skeptical about how good the next thriller I read would seem in comparison. Fortunately, I picked this beauty up.

The premise of this book is nothing special really. The story follows several different people living in an apartment building, one of which is a serial killer. What makes it special is the writing style and the sheer brilliance of the characters. Again, on the surface they don't seem unique-there's the runaway teen delinquent, the kindly old lady, the weird misfit, the perverted landlord and many more. But every character is well-developed and you genuinely become very invested in their lives and what's going to happen to them next.

This actually helps a lot with one of the book's main issues. It's told in third person but each chapter focuses on a different character. This definitely takes some getting used to (there are a LOT of characters) but the characters are genuinely all quite different and having a unique voice for each of them stops it being the train wreck it could have been otherwise. Apart from that minor hiccup, I couldn't fault the writing style. It was engaging, suspenseful and all without being melodramatic or cheesy. Hey, actual good villain POV chapters! That never happens!

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book, enough to immediately acquire everything else the author wrote. I consider this her best book for sure and it's the perfect example of how to do a thriller right. Definitely worth a read

So enjoyed the characters and the plot is refreshing. Marwood's writing style has an ease to it that made me forget at times that I was reading. If you can stand some gore and smelly stuff, I highly recommend this one.

I bought this mainly because I don't usually read a lot of murder stories (this isn't even about the police investigation, but rather the clueless people who can't tell that their neighbour is a serial killer) and I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised.

I mean, sure, I now know a whole lot more about mummifying a body than I might actually need, but it was a really good book overall. The characters were all nicely rounded and I found myself invested in their continued survival (with a neighbour like that, you never know). It's all rather grim and icky, though — a lot of disgusting imagery and rundown, decaying things — but overall a fascinating book. I liked it.

My favourite part was to see the relationships between the tenants and just how easy it is to justify weird things that happen in your surroundings. I couldn't even call the neighbours ignorant because there really weren't that many clues as to what was going on behind the serial killer's door. It makes you wonder just how much you might not know about the people in your building...

Also: it has a satisfying ending. Surprisingly satisfying, actually, since I expected it to end with doom and gloom — as these books often tend to do. That was not the case with this one, however, and I absolutely love that. Well worth a read.

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Una vecchia signora che vive nel seminterrato, un professore che non esce mai di casa e che ascolta musica classica a volume altissimo a qualsiasi ora del giorno e della notte, un rifugiato politico iraniano, una giovanissima ladruncola di strada, un giovane disoccupato chiaccherone e invadente, un padrone di casa viscido e meschino, un gatto nero di nome Psycho.

Questo è il condominio in cui si trasferisce Lisa, il posto ideale per nascondersi e sfuggire agli uomini che la inseguono per ucciderla. La stanza vuota di una ragazza scomparsa nel nulla, un proprietario avido che non fa troppe domande quando vede i contanti.
Ciò che non sa, è che uno dei suoi vicini è un serial killer che uccide giovani donne e le imbalsama tenendole in casa come bambole.


Un romanzo grottesco ma allo stesso tempo ironico, capace di essere tanto brutale e ricco di particolari macabri e raccapriccianti quando segue il punto di vista dell'assassino, quanto leggero e delicato nel descrivere le miserie delle vite dei condomini, i loro problemi, i loro sacrifici, e nonostante tutto la loro allegria ed il loro ottimismo e la loro forza nel tirare avanti un giorno in più sperando in un futuro migliore.

E forse è proprio questo il bello di questo libro, che non mi sento di considerare un vero e proprio thriller. Non lo scoprire l'identità dell'assassino, che in fondo non ci interessa più di tanto, quanto la rete di relazioni e amicizia che si forma fra queste persone che vivono tutte ai margini della società, nella periferia di Londra senza vedere mai il centro della città; le loro miserie e le loro sfortune e il loro rimanere sempre immobili sfiorati dalla vita della metropoli.
Delle persone al limite, dei disagiati, degli emarginati, delle persone sole, povere, con tanti problemi, ma che riescono a fare fronte comune nella vita di tutti i giorni e sono capaci di ancor più complicità e fiducia quando la necessità lo richiede.

Uno di loro rimane comunque un assassino, ma in un contesto del genere sembra quasi diventare esso stesso una vittima. Una vittima della sua profonda e sofferta solitudine, vittima di un vita difficile che non è mai stato in grado di affrontare da solo, vittima delle sue psicosi e dell'aiuto che non ha mai ricevuto da nessuno. Quasi ci fa pena e ci dispiace per questa persona disturbata abbandonata a se stessa che segue comunque una sua logica e dei suoi principi, simbolo e denuncia di un degrado sociale e umano che non dovrebbe nemmeno esistere.