I don’t usually read psychological thrillers so it was great to discover author, Miranda Rijks. And through the mundane route of an Amazon book recommendation, no less. I’ve now devoured two of her thrillers, The House Swap and Every Breath You Take, after purchasing both at a ridiculously low price that really discredits the quality of Rijks’s prose and her plotting.
What first intrigued me was the premise of The House Swap. A late friend of mine who was married to a professor often swapped houses with other professors when they vacationed in the UK. The British professor and their family lived in my friend’s Toronto house and she and her family lived in the British family’s house. Free accommodation – not bad!
All went well for my friend, but Rijk asks, what if the arrangement goes horribly wrong? From the house being a dump to hostile neighbours to murder? Great suspense and satisfying plot twists kept me reading well into the night.
Sorry, readers, no spoilers!
I hesitated only a minute to dive into another Rijks’s thriller, Every Breath You Take. Here the husband of the protagonist suddenly disappears. Soon she learns that he’s been kidnapped. To save his life, she must perform humiliating tasks set by the kidnapper and post them on social media. No one believes her, especially the police. Once again amazing suspense and a great twist I did not see coming.
Both books are published by Inkubator Books, a digital publisher specializing in crime fiction.
So who is Miranda Rijks? Good question. In 2016, she was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer in the middle of her successful business career. She survived 11 rounds of chemo and having her femur replaced. After recovering, she retired to pursue her lifelong dream to write – and write she has! In less than 10 years, she’s written no less than 26 novels; in other words two to three books a year!
Read more about Miranda Rijks here. And eat her books!!