The titular Anna in Tracy Maton’s sizzling debut thriller has never known the good life. She grew up in an unstable environment where drink, drugs and then – when she hit her twenties – dead-end jobs were the norm. But when she meets Ben, the two become an item and she moves to the “saccharine Somerset village” where he lives, and Anna soon adapts to her new life. Ben’s extended family really take to her; she gets a teaching assistant job; and every Sunday there are even church visits. One day, she encounters new village resident, the flamboyant Sofia, and the two become fast friends. But it isn’t long before Sofia starts wondering aloud to Anna if her life hasn’t become too stultifying… Maton admits a debt to Patricia Highsmith’s ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’, but where Highsmith’s novel is cool and flinty, Maton’s is – through Anna’s first-person narrative – nicely salty and fizzing with humour. RM

Published by Viper