I would like to thank Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for an advance copy of The Woman Inside, a stand-alone psychological thriller set in the Swedish town of Lund.

A doctor and his wife are found dead in their home. There are three suspects, Bill, a widower with crushing debt, Karla, a student who rents a room from Bill and cleans for the doctor and Jennica, a single woman who has met her perfect man until she finds he has secrets of his own.

I didn’t find The Woman Inside engrossing or even that interesting. I liked the premise, which sounded intriguing and full of possibility to me, but the reality is slow and most of the novel is about uncovering the characters’ secrets rather than a murder investigation, which is where my interest lies.

The narrative switches between the three suspects in the run up to the murders, interspersed with police interviews of both them and more peripheral characters, who offer insights into the suspects and newspaper articles. I like these interspersions the best as they offer a welcome neutrality in the narratives. I think the author does a great job of showing how the main characters offer their version of their story, which doesn’t always fit the emerging truth. It’s human nature to put one’s own slant on events, but I find it wearing and not particularly interesting in fiction. By the end I couldn’t have cared less which of these unattractive characters carried out the murder.

The novel is a gradual unraveling of the characters’ secrets, or maybe not secrets, rather hidden behaviour and character traits. And, of course, which one of them was desperate or unhinged enough to commit murder. The author manages to keep that hidden, so the reveal was a surprise. I like the irony of the final few pages, where, for one character at least, the self justification just keeps going.

The Woman Inside works well as a psychological thriller, it’s simply not for me.