Thriller |
Mystery |
Suspense |
Fiction |
Summary
Summary
'An eerily atmospheric reworking of Hitchcock's Rear Window' - The Guardian
She's watching you, but who's watching her?
Lily Gullick lives with her husband Aiden in a new-build flat opposite an estate which has been marked for demolition. A keen birdwatcher, she can't help spying on her neighbours.
Until one day Lily sees something suspicious through her binoculars and soon her elderly neighbour Jean is found dead. Lily, intrigued by the social divide in her local area as it becomes increasingly gentrified, knows that she has to act. But her interference is not going unnoticed, and as she starts to get close to the truth, her own life comes under threat.
But can Lily really trust everything she sees?
'Ross Armstrong will feed your appetite for suspense' - Evening Standard
Author Notes
Ross Armstrong is an actor and writer based in North London. He studied English Literature at Warwick University and acting at RADA. As a stage and screen actor he has performed in the West End, Broadway and in upcoming shows for HBO and Netflix. Ross' debut title The Watcher was a top twenty bestseller and has been longlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Bird and people watcher Lily Gullick, the narrator of Armstrong's uneven debut, uses binoculars to observe her neighbors in nearby flats in London. She names them, invents stories about them, and talks to her husband, Aiden, about them. Lily lives in a new apartment building, while older buildings across the street are slated to be demolished and their residents "rehoused" elsewhere. Lily tries to befriend Jean, a resident resisting demolition, and when Jean is murdered, she becomes obsessed with finding the killer. Only gradually does the reader get a clear picture of Lily as she reveals more about herself and her troubles with other people, including the police. Alfred Hitchcock fans will appreciate the many nods to the famed director, from the obvious Rear Window scenario to Aiden's planned book on Hitchcock, but this novel, with no memorable characters other than Lily, fails to generate much suspense. Agent: Juliet Mushens, Caskie Mushens Agency (U.K.). (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
The Dry by Jane Harper; The Hermit by Thomas Rydahl; The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer; The Watcher by Ross Armstrong; The Beautiful Dead by Belinda Bauer Parched and crackling after a two-year drought, the Australian town of Kiewarra is the highly combustible setting for Jane Harper's first novel The Dry (Little, Brown, [pound]12.99). Nature isn't the only thing that's dangerous in this small town in the middle of nowhere -- when policeman Aaron Falk returns from Melbourne to attend the funeral of childhood friend Luke Hadler, who apparently shot his wife and six-year-old son before turning the gun on himself, he finds a community rife with poverty, alcoholism and despair. It's Falk's first visit since he was run out of Kiewarra as a teenager, suspected of killing his classmate Ellie Deacon. Many people still believe he's guilty, and he wants to get out of the place as soon as possible. Hadler's parents, who have discovered that Falk and their son gave each other false alibis for the day of Ellie's death, persuade him to stay and investigate, and he finds himself trying to untangle two crimes that occurred 20 years apart. Solid storytelling that, despite a plethora of flashbacks, never loses momentum, strong characterisation and a sense of place so vivid that you can almost feel the blistering heat add up to a remarkably assured debut. Thomas Rydahl's first novel, The Hermit (Oneworld, [pound]16.99, translated by KE Semmel), which won the prestigious Glass Key award in Denmark, is set on Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands. The title is a misnomer: sixtysomething Erhard Jorgensen, an expat Dane, may live in a remote shack with only two goats for company, but, as a taxi driver-cum-piano tuner, he's familiar to many of the islanders. This comes in useful when a car containing a dead baby is found on a beach and Erhard, realising that the PR-conscious authorities are attempting a cover-up in order to avoid deterring tourists, decides to investigate. Although he knows nothing about computers, he calls in favours and finds himself drawn into a web of corruption. The pace may be stately, but a humane and appealing protagonist and plenty of local colour make this an engrossing and enjoyable read. The Chemist (Sphere, [pound]20) by Stephenie Meyer, bestselling author of the Twilight saga, is an awkward, not to say preposterous, hybrid of action thriller and romantic suspense. The eponymous chemist -- or, more accurately, torturer -- goes by a variety of aliases, but is usually known as Alex. Formerly in the employment of a secret US government agency, she was wont to extract confessions using chemical concoctions of her own devising until, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, her mentor was killed and she was forced to go on the run. At the start of the book, she is hiding out in a variety of heavily booby-trapped locations where she sleeps in a bath while wearing a gas mask and keeps a lot of gadgetry, including a pair of actual killer earrings, close at hand. Despite this, when an old colleague emails her, she agrees to kidnap and extract information from schoolteacher Daniel Beach who is, supposedly, part of a plot to release a deadly virus. After subjecting the poor man to considerable agony, she realises that it's a case of mistaken identity and apologises -- whereupon he falls in love with her. After a great deal of moving from place to place and hanging out, together with much canoodling and a makeover sequence, the pace picks up again, but it's too little, too late, and way too implausible. Ross Armstrong's debut The Watcher (Harlequin Mira) begins with a blizzard of attention-seeking staccato sentences -- the literary equivalent of being jabbed repeatedly with a pair of compasses -- but it's worth persevering for an eerily atmospheric reworking of Hitchcock's Rear Window with a nod towards The Girl on the Train, set in rapidly gentrifying north London. When troubled birdwatcher Lily turns her binoculars on her neighbours from her new-build flat, she realises that something sinister is happening in the marked-for-demolition block over the road. An elderly neighbour, Jean, tries to phone Lily just before she is killed, and, when the police are dismissive, Lily decides that she must investigate... An intriguingly unreliable narrator, plenty of suspense and the added bonus of name-spotting fun for Hitchcock aficionados. While it's not quite up there with her best (Blacklands, Rubbernecker), fans of Belinda Bauer certainly won't be disappointed by The Beautiful Dead (Bantam, [pound]12.99). Not only is Eve Singer struggling to care for her father, who has dementia, but her career as a TV crime reporter is threatened by younger and blonder talent, so, when a serial killer offers her the chance of a scoop, she bites. At first, the killer welcomes the publicity, but when Eve agrees to cooperate with the police in a news blackout, he turns on her. A disturbing, intelligent and, at times, genuinely moving story, The Beautiful Dead is written with subtlety and an impressive lightness of touch. - Laura Wilson.
Booklist Review
Early references to Alfred Hitchcock suggest to the reader that what Lily Gullick thinks she sees from her apartment window may not be the whole picture. Her husband teases her for using the same skills and notation when observing her London neighbors as she did when birding with her father. There's lots to watch lately as an older building on their block is set to be demolished to make way for fancier digs like their own. Among the squatters in the old building is an old woman who is murdered. Did Lily see something that could identify the killer? As her belief that she can track down the culprit escalates, so does the reader's sense that Lily may not be an entirely reliable narrator. This first novel will appeal to fans of Girl on the Train. Armstrong is a British actor whose screen credits include Mr. Selfridge and Ripper Street.--Keefe, Karen Copyright 2017 Booklist