You might be wondering why I’ve decided to two Death In The Snowy Dark books in the middle of April. Well, as Hans Solo used to say, “It’s not my fault.”
All I wanted to do was read C. J. Tudor’s latest novel, ‘The Gathering‘ which was released as an audiobook yesterday. It’s not my fault that it’s set in Alaska in the winter.
Given that I was going to heading into the snowy dark anyway, I decided to pair ‘The Gathering‘ with Sue Watson’s latest thriller, ‘The Lodge‘, a family drama set in a snowbound lodge on the Cornish coast.
I’m hoping for two gripping reads that will give me shivers triggered not just by the snow but by what’s happening in the dark.
‘The Gathering’ (2024) by C. J. Tudor
I’ve been reading C. J. Tudor since she published her debut novel ‘The Chalk Man‘ in 2018. I loved her grim and gritty thriller ‘The Taking Of Annie Thorne’ (a.k.a. ‘The Hiding Place‘) and her spooky thriller ‘The Burning Girls‘ about a vicar and her daughter who uncover unpleasant things when they move from the city to a small English village.
C. J. Tudor novels aren’t formulaic. They’re all dark and gritty but they’re centred around strong characters who are very different from one another.
It looks like ‘The Gathering‘ is opening up more new territory. It’s set in Alaska rather than England and it has a colony of vampyrs in it.
I’m hoping that this will be an edge-of-the-seat read with some original twists.
C. J. Tudor is the author of The Burning Girls, The Other People, The Hiding Place, and The Chalk Man, which won the International Thriller Writers award for Best First Novel and the Strand Magazine Award for Best Debut Novel. Over the years she has worked as a copywriter, television presenter, voice-over artist, and dog walker.
‘The Lodge’ (2024) by Sue Watson
‘The Lodge’ will be my first Sue Watson novel. I’ve seen her books around a lot (she seems to publish two a year) but they struck me as family dramas of the haven’t-I read-this-before? kind. I know that’s probably unfair but it still stopped me from pressing the BUY button.
‘The Lodge‘ caught my attention because it’s a variant of a locked room mystery and because it has the Cornish coast in the snow. I don’t tend to think of Cornwall and snow in the same sentence.
I’m hoping that I’ll get a decent mystery and maybe be tempted to visit Sue Watson’s back catalogue.
Sue Watson was a journalist on national magazines and newspapers before becoming a TV producer with the BBC.
Now a bestselling author, Sue has written twenty novels in the last ten years. Since 2018, she has explored the darker side of life, writing psychological thrillers with big twists, including ‘Our Little Lies’ (2018), ‘The Woman Next Door’ (2019) ‘The Empty Nest’ (2019) ‘The Sister-in -law’ (2020), ‘The Forever Home’ (2021) and ‘The Lodge’ (2023).
Originally from Manchester, she now lives with her family in leafy Worcestershire
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