Books like Platform Seven — picked by fans

Privilege, entitlement, politics, and sleaze, it’s all here, along with the disturbing sense that many perpetrators get away with far too many misdeeds for most of their lives, while their victims’ lives are instantly thrown into crisis. It’s a solid, twisty psychological thriller with hints of the Bullingdon Club and Westminster bad behaviour.

A school siege is a theme that will strike terror into the hearts of teachers and parents everywhere. It’s that planned-for scenario that will ‘never happen here’ (rural Somerset). And then it does. Lupton slows down the narrative so it feels as if events are unfolding at a pace close to real time. Alongside the stress and anxiety, Lupton draws on her characters’ stories to examine the world we live in and aspects of humanity. There are stories of first love and parental despair, we glimpse the mind of a psychopath and the stoic heroism of two Syrian refugee brothers, who’ve already been through hell at the hands of people smugglers. Dormant racism rears its ugly head. It’s a poignant read with plenty for book clubs to discuss. 

The Silence is a psychological thriller with several layers. There are two timelines: present day, where the main character, Abby is a doctor, married with two daughters, and a ‘Then’ storyline set in the early 1990s when young Abby has been sent to Italy to stay with relatives in an old village house, following her mother’s suicide. Book clubs will be talking until midnight about multiple themes in this novel which include suicide and murder, what unsupervised children get up to, marital tension, blackmail, and the pressures of being a politician in a world of social media. Johnson is a talented author who deserves to be better known.

I was late discovering Lisa Jewell’s psychological thrillers but I’m in awe of how her novels are a masterclass in psychological fiction. I’ve chosen Invisible Girl because it’s rooted firmly in the domestic noir genre with ordinary family life contrasting with what lies beneath. Characters are not what they seem to be. For book club discussion there’s a fascinating theme around how lonely misfit men can be radicalised online into the dark and sinister world of women-hating ‘incels.’ Incel stands for ‘involuntary celibates’: angry men who can’t find a woman to love them and blame all women. At the extreme, these men become unhinged and violent towards women they don’t even know. Others are sad losers, who become victims in other ways. Book clubs will find plenty to discuss in this novel.

I love all books by Ruth M. Arthur, and this one is particularly special. It starts with three sisters and an evil doll named Dido. I love multi-generational stories, and this one starts in the late 1800s and ends up in a post-WW II orphanage. I have read this book about seven times and never tire of its compelling power. Arthur weaves the supernatural into real life and loss, exploring how trauma can persist and damage generations, while giving young readers a gripping read.

I love books that mash up genres and Dan Will has done just that with this first offering in his Arcane Casebook series. His hero, Alexander Lockerby, is a man after my own heart—a noir detective through and through. Only this fedora-wearing gumshoe has a little extra zing up his sleeve—magic. He’s a runewright, and while I have to admit I didn’t know what that was when I began the book, it became perfectly clear by the end. I won’t ruin it for you, but suffice it to say, it’s aces with the noir genre—a man gifted with certain talents, but not ones enough to gain him the easy life. This story starts out simple, but takes little time to grab you by the collar and slap you across the kisser. And the good news? There are eight more to keep it company. 

I love film noir and have written and published on it. I’ve also read numerous academic books on noir. But for those who want all the information and less of the jargon, no one does it better than Eddie Muller, author and host of Turner Movie Classics’ Noir Alley and president of the Film Noir Foundation, which hosts annual noir screening events in multiple US cities and publishes a wonderful magazine for members.

Dark City is full of amazing, restored photos alongside informative texts, great for reading and rereading. I keep mine on a coffee table.

I have loved this novel since first reading it in college—probably when I should have been studying for exams! 

Double Indemnity is one of the first and best American noir novels and served as the basis for the 1944 film by the same name. The novel taught me about the classic noir trap: a basically good but flawed man helps a basically bad but attractive woman in an effort to murder her husband, the good/flawed man hoping to end up with both the woman and the money.

But things seem fated to go wrong, and what starts out as a bleak tale ends up even bleaker—at the dark end of a one-way street. Since reading this powerful novel—and seeing the equally powerful film with its crackling dialogue by famed hardboiled crime writer Raymond Chandler—I have never looked at life quite the same way again.

Until I read Wasson’s provocative book, it was my understanding that Robert Towne crafted his Oscar-winning Chinatown script with guidance from his star (Jack Nicholson), producer (Robert Evans), and director (Roman Polanski), all of whom urged Towne to find a cogent narrative inside a sprawling concept embedded with powerful metaphors.

Then Wasson debunked the romantic myth of the genius scribe working in isolation by revealing not just the extent of Polanski’s notes but, even more explosively, the involvement of Edward Taylor as Towne’s “editor” and possible uncredited co-writer. I didn’t think it was possible for me to be shocked anymore by discoveries about my chosen field, but Wasson’s book reminded me that solo screenwriting credits are, at best, abstractions and, at worst, misnomers.

Cynicism and fatalism drank heavily together in the hardboiled genre of the private detective novel, but no more so than in this mid-40s book. 

I think they even take refuge in the novel’s title: Build My Gallows High. It tells the embittered tale of Red Bailey, a guy in hiding from private detective work after being exploited by a powerful client and betrayed by the beautiful and manipulative woman Bailey loved. 

Bailey would never go back to those days—until he would. His ex-client finds him and blackmails him into searching for that woman, who was also once that powerful man’s lover.  

I love the way each of the three of them harbor conflicting ideas of how this story will end. That’s perfect—the book’s conflict and bile inspired the creation of what has long been one of the darkest and most celebrated of films noir, Out of the Past.