There are two essential parts of a good suspense book: premise and execution. A good story masters both. The premise is the elevator pitch: a brief, bare-bones sketch that hooks the reader from the opening pages. The execution is the final product, comprised of pace, characterization, twists, internal logic, and believability. It is much easier to come up with a good idea than to pull it off. Probably every mediocre book I’ve read fails in the execution.
Here is a list of five books with brilliant premises and some notes on their execution.
Jessie works for a security company like On Star. One night on her shift, she gets a call from a man whose car has broken down. While she is helping him, someone pulls up to assist. The client steps out to talk to the Good Samaritan. Listening to empty static on her headset, Jessie hears a shot ring out. When the police arrive, the car is abandoned by the side of the road. No sign of the driver.
This premise is an intriguing twist on Hitchcock’s classic window. The protagonist has witnessed something, but what? I thought the whole book worked well.
2.
Lucy is in a state of midlife ennui. Things have not gone as she would have liked. Single and childless, yearning for what might have been, she wanders into an IKEA. She spots a cherubic baby in a cart, momentarily alone with her parents’ backs turned. In a split second decision, she steals the baby.
While the premise itself is nothing new, what makes this book intriguing is the point of view. Instead of being strictly about the frantic parents and heroic police, we get inside the mind of both Lucy and the child. The story is surprising in many ways. I loved it.
3.
Alice and Jake are newlyweds living in San Francisco. As a wedding gift, they receive an invitation to join a private club that promises marital satisfaction. No couple who has joined has ever gotten divorced. Reluctant to say no to the client who gave it to them, Jake and Alice unknowingly slip into a cult.
I liked about 80% of this book, including the lady or the tiger ending. There were some good twists. It was way too long, though, and the parallels to Scientology were unimaginative.
4.
The book starts with Iris having toe-curling sex with Will, her chiseled husband. He is about to leave for a conference in Orlando but they’re so in love that they go another round. That night, with Will gone, Iris sees on the evening news that a plane leaving from Atlanta crashed. Mesmerized, she is relieved when she learns it was flying to Seattle. A short time later, she gets a call from the airline. They regret to inform her that her husband perished on the Seattle flight. Iris is forced to look more deeply at the man she married. Who was he, really, and why was he flying to Seattle that day?
There is a good twist at midpoint. I enjoyed the chapters in Seattle in which Iris investigates Will’s secret past. By the end, though, the author seemed to be going more for shock value than plausibility.
5.
Her New York star fading, Joan Carpenter takes an evening anchor job in St. Louis. After she settles in, she begins to receive disturbing letters from a crazed fan. Even worse, when the stalker kicks it up a notch and kills someone to impress Joan, the station manager can’t resist the lure of higher ratings.
I loved this book. It’s a modern epistolary novel told entirely through emails, faxes (it was published in the early ’90s), memos, etc. The culprit was both surprising and inevitable.
Books Smitten 