Today, I’m recommending the dark psychological thriller, The Passenger by Lisa Lutz. While known for her bestselling series about the Spellman’s, a quirky family of private investigators, Lutz deftly makes the transition to psychological suspense with this compulsively readable story of a young woman who creates and sheds new identities as she crisscrosses the country to escape her past.
“In case you were wondering, I didn’t do it. I didn’t have anything to do with Frank’s death. I don’t have an alibi, so you’ll have to take my word for it…”
Forty-eight hours after discovering her husband’s body at the base of the stairs, Tanya Dubois cashes in her credit cards, dyes her hair brown, demands a new name from a shadowy voice over the phone, and flees town. It’s not the first time.
Ending up in Austin, Texas, she meets Blue, a female bartender who sees through her fake persona and offers her a place to stay. With few options, Tanya-now-Amelia accepts, which forges an uneasy and dangerous alliance between the two women.
When threats from their pasts resurface, Blue devises a risky escape for them both. Forced into yet another fake identity, Debra (formerly known as Tanya, then Amelia) struggles to settle into her new life and begins to suspect that Blue’s plan may have put her in far more danger than she could have ever imagined.
Full of heart-stopping escapes, devious deceptions, and the slow-burning mystery of what sent Tanya on the run in the first place, The Passenger is a must-read!
Check it out and find many other suspenseful works like it at the Sioux City Public Library.
