Kirkus Reviews QR Code
THE NEW NEIGHBOR by Carter Wilson

THE NEW NEIGHBOR

by Carter Wilson

Pub Date: April 12th, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72824-752-6
Publisher: Poisoned Pen

Wilson returns to Bury, New Hampshire, where a painfully widowed millionaire takes up residence in a house even more troubled than he is.

In the middle of his wife Holly’s memorial service after she’s died of an aneurysm at 34, Baltimore bartender Aidan Marlowe learns that the numbers he’s been playing twice a week for many years have hit a $29.8 million Powerball jackpot. Marlowe, a dissociative type who can sense energies most people can’t, though he often fades out of the picture for hours on end, decides to move to upscale Bury and buy a house that was owned by investment banker Logan Yates before he vanished along with several members of his family. He soon begins to get insinuatingly creepy letters welcoming him to Bury and signed “WE WHO WATCH.” His questions to Abril, the longtime Yates housekeeper, net just enough information to make him feel that he and his 7-year-old twins, Maggie and Bo, need more protection, but his visit to Police Chief Walter Sike produces nothing but bland assurances, and he’s unwilling to provide Sike’s friend and security consultant Owen Brace with the personal information required to take the wholesale measures Brace urges. Soon after a housewarming party flushes out the news that Marlowe’s won the lottery, a secret he’s been determined to keep, WE WHO WATCH make it clear that they’re interested in Marlowe’s money, that they’re not going away, and that the violence they threaten won’t end with him. The big reveal, which goes on forever, strains credulity, but there’s no denying Wilson’s power to weave a dark web and keep making it darker and darker.

Stuck at home because of the pandemic? This is cheaper than moving, and it’ll make you feel better about staying put.