Thriller Archives — Keeping Up With The Penguins

Your Driver Is Waiting – Priya Guns

October 13, 2026 / Sheree / 0 Comments

Your Driver Is Waiting is a “blackly comic and deeply political novel about anger, love, and privilege” as per the log line. That’s such an apt summation, I couldn’t come up with anything better myself.

Damani is a RideShare driver, and she is angry about nearly everything. She has “no kids, no pets, just one job and a whole load of responsibilities” (including, but not limited to, her mother who is incapacitated by grief after the unexpected loss of her husband, Damani’s father). Damani has an anthropology degree that she’s not using at all, and she won’t tell the reader what city she’s in. “As long as I’m alive,” she muses, “does it really matter where I am?”.

She’s spot on: as I read Your Driver Is Waiting, I kept trying to imagine the story taking place in different locations, and it really could be set in any major city in any colonised country.

Around her, Damani sees protests and political activism everywhere – she’d love to participate herself, but she’s just too damn tired. At this point, simply continuing to exist feels like a revolutionary act. Well-meaning liberals take to the streets, and sign petitions, and hold fundraisers, but none of it seems to be making a tangible difference in her life as a queer Tamil woman, an exploited gig worker constantly on the brink of eviction.

After a minor traffic incident, Damani falls into an intoxicating love affair with a (relatively) wealthy white woman named Jolene. Jolene is woke, don’t worry; she’s a social worker, she’s read the books, and she’s a vocal ally. She seems to be keenly aware of the structural inequities that define their lives… but does she really “get it”? When Damani brings Joelene to Doo Wop, a makeshift community centre slash bar slash organising space slash soup kitchen, they quickly realise that the gulf between their lived experiences might be too wide to bridge, even with all the hot sex. Then, Jolene does something unforgivable, and it throws Damani’s world off its axis.

Your Driver Is Waiting reads like a new friend telling you about her life. It seems like she’s mostly telling it straight, but I kept sensing little hints throughout that Damani might not be as reliable a narrator of her life as she might have you believe. She keeps weapons in the car that doubles as her workplace – an ostensibly smart idea, given how often she encounters the threat of violence on her job, but gradually her psychological reliance on the proximity of those weapons becomes unsettling.

In (very short) chapters, this staccato narrative might come off as satirical if you haven’t spent any time at all in ostentatiously leftist spaces. Your Driver Is Waiting works because it is technicolour realism – everyone who’s been to a #BLM protest or an anti-racist book club will recognise the characters in it. Guns has a keen eye for the performative nature of so much “activism” in the 2020s, and is scathing in her critique. It’s a must-read for anyone who enjoyed Kiley Reid’s Such A Fun Age, and doesn’t mind their narrators slightly unhinged.

P.S. There is a very sad (but peripheral) dog death about a third of the way through, so a heads up if you’re sensitive to that.

Read Your Driver Is Waiting on audiobook via Libro.fm here.

My favourite Amazon reviews of Your Driver Is Waiting:

“YOUR DRIVER IS WAITING is TAXI DRIVER for the gig economy” – Jennifer Jordan
“I don’t mind a leisurely traipse through a character’s brain as long as that brain is interesting” – V. Foster
“The ending was disappointing but I was relieved to get there.” W.A. Burt

The Murder Rule – Dervla McTiernan

July 14, 2026 / Sheree / 0 Comments

If you’ve watched any Netflix true crime documentaries in the past decade or so, you’re familiar with the various Innocence Projects around the world. These teams of attorneys (and attorneys-in-training) dedicate months, even years, to exonerating people who have been convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. Dervla McTiernan has turned this into a brilliant conceit for a mystery-thriller novel, The Murder Rule: what if someone on the team actually wants the criminal to stay behind bars?

The story is primarily set in Virginia, in 2019. Hannah is a law student, and in the opening pages she blackmails her way into a coveted volunteer role at the UVA Innocence Project. McTiernan doesn’t hide the fact that Hannah has ulterior motives. From the very start, we know she’s not in it just for glory – there’s a particular case she wants to dismantle from the inside, and a man she wants to keep behind bars.

The case is that of Michael Dandridge, a man who was sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a young mother as her children slept in the next room. He’s been locked up for over a decade, and with questions being raised about the validity of the evidence used to convict him, prosecutors have elected to re-try his case. The Innocence Project team – student volunteers Camilla, Sean, and (now) Hannah, led by project director Robert Parekh – scramble to prepare for the preliminary hearing. Hannah is cunning and wily, and she has her eyes and ears open for any opportunity to sabotage the defence.

Hannah’s story alternates with chapters styled as diary entries written by her mother, Laura, dated 1994. Laura’s story gradually reveals why Hannah is so determined to keep Dandridge in prison – and why she has ended up effectively parenting her alcoholic mother in the present.

The Murder Rule is a great mix of psychological thriller, legal procedural, and murder mystery. There are a lot of elements at play, and plenty of twists (some you’ll see coming a mile off, some will surprise you). As the tagline on the cover promises: no one is innocent in this story.

I had a couple of minor problems with it, though they didn’t detract much from the story as a whole for me. First off, I’m not sure third-year law students would need all the for-dummies explanations of courtroom procedure and evidence rules that Parekh provides; it’s a slightly clumsy way of giving the reader the information they need to understand the stakes. And secondly, the characters (slash suspects) and their motivations and relationships get a little murky as The Murder Rule builds towards its climax. McTiernan thankfully straightens it all out with a Legally Blonde-esque courtroom showdown.

Ultimately, The Murder Rule is a book about confirmation bias, and how we keep believing the stories we tell ourselves. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more books by McTiernan if they’re all up to this standard.

Read The Murder Rule on audiobook via Libro.fm here.

My favourite Amazon reviews of The Murder Rule:

“If you really want to prove the man of murder, why is she part of the group that is trying to set him free??? Why not join the people that are trying to keep him in prison???” – Ivy
“Be prepared not only to suspend disbelief, but to ignore all rational thought.” – Amazon Customer
“It’s not a book that gives you anything to think about after you finish it. It’s basically chewing gum for the mind.” – Hey There Delilah

Whalefall – Daniel Kraus

May 19, 2026 / Sheree / 0 Comments

If you are at all claustrophobic or squeamish about oxygen-running-low scenarios, you’re going to want to turn around right now. Whalefall, the 2023 novel by Daniel Kraus, will fuel your nightmares for years to come.

The story follows a young man who undertakes a solo scuba dive in the hopes of recovering his father’s remains from the ocean floor. Twenty minutes or so into the dive, he becomes tangled in the anatomy of a giant squid, and finds himself promptly swallowed by a hungry sperm whale. From inside the belly of the beast (literally), he has to figure out how to escape with less than an hour’s worth of oxygen left in his tank.

The blurb of Whalefall pitches it as being similar to The Martian, which is honestly what drew me to it. Having read it now, I’ll warn you that it’s similar only in the sense of it being a survival story, a man battling alone to overcome overwhelming odds in a scenario that seems unlikely on its face. Mark Watney, the hero of Andy Weir’s science fiction adventure novel, is funny and highly motivated. Jay Gardiner, the protagonist of Whalefall, is bitter and humourless. I don’t think I cracked a smile once reading this book. His misery-guts mentality made him a lot harder to root for, and the resolution of his circumstances a lot less satisfying.

Jay’s backstory is revealed through a series of memories-slash-hallucinations he experiences while fighting the effects of nitrogen narcosis (the weird stuff your brain does when it gets too much nitrogen and not enough oxygen). He had a rocky relationship with his now-deceased father, who died by suicide, jumping off the side of a boat to his death in the late stages of untreatable mesothelioma. Jay’s mother and sisters had pushed him to repair his relationship with his father before it was too late; now that it is, he hoped to assuage his guilt by retrieving his father’s bones and putting him to rest. That’s how he ended up in this predicament (swallowed by a sperm whale), and he relies on the knowledge that his father passed down to him – about diving, and whales, and oceans – to find his way out.

Prepare yourself for a lot – a lot – of detail about ocean diving, the gear and the logistics, as well as the anatomy of whales. Kraus doesn’t buck any trends in the long tradition of deeply detailed books about hungry cetaceans (see: Moby Dick). On the upside, the chapters of Whalefall are short – some just a sentence long – so that alleviates the feeling of an information avalanche.

In the end, Jay effectively Slumdog Millionaires his way out of the whale’s belly. By conveniently recalling the bits and pieces his family taught him over the course of his life, he strings together enough knowledge to use the paltry tools he has available to contrive an escape.

As I mentioned at the start, it’s not a good idea to read Whalefall if you’re freaked out about the idea of enclosed spaces and tight squeezes. Even if you’ve got this far in the review to see the spoilers (that he escapes in the end), his experiences in the stomach of a sperm whale are deeply discomfiting. Kraus’s writing is very rich in sensory detail, which makes the times when the protagonist very nearly has the life literally squeezed out of him (yes, it happens more than once) feel a bit too real. Even if you aren’t particularly sensitive to that kind of scenario, Whalefall might be tough to read at times.

I also felt like Kraus tries too hard to be Profound, meditating on loss and frustration at the expense of more realistic moments of matter-of-fact dark humour. Whalefall could have been buoyed by a wry comment or two, but instead it’s weighed down by grief and despair with no relief. I get that being trapped in the stomach of a sperm whale is hardly the time to crack wise, but I think most of us would be capable of making at least one or two pithy observations to lighten the mood. Even the guy from 127 Hours gave us a few laughs.

I’d highly recommend Whalefall to fans of Lanny by Max Porter. The phrasing, the pacing, the perspective, and even elements of the story all align quite closely. You’ll be disappointed if you pick up Whalefall expecting something like The Martian, as I did, but if you’ve read Lanny you’ll have a much better idea of what’s coming.

My favourite Amazon reviews of Whalefall:

“Whiny teenager acts impulsively understanding a stupid mission, gets swallowed by a whale just trying to grab a bite to eat, and then he slowly tortures the poor animal to get his whiny butt out. Wonderful, just wonderful. Oh, he reflects and learns some life lessons while he’s carving up the whale from inside? Ok, then it’s okay – dude learns something he could have learned by sitting on a beach looking out at the waves, but let’s needlessly butcher a multi-ton mammal instead.” – GadgetLover67
“Men will do anything besides go to therapy.” – Amazon Customer
“Overly dramatic and unnecessarily long. I only finished it because I was hoping he wouldn’t make it.” – Ella Blue
“He was lucky, for Moby Dick would gave made short work of him.” – ReadsLots

How To Kill Your Family – Bella Mackie

May 5, 2026 / Sheree / 1 Comment

How To Kill Your Family has the perfect tagline: “They say you can’t choose your family… but you can kill them.” Yes, it’s another novel with a title that might raise a few eyebrows, but the delightfully dark contents don’t disappoint.

The story is narrated from Limehouse Prison by Grace Bernard, the “Morton Murderer”. She’s been convicted of a murder she didn’t commit, but – as her hand-written prison memoir reveals – she got away with several more that she most certainly did.

She’s been planning these murders since she was a teenager, in the hopes of avenging her mother (who died when Grace was 13). Grace is the illegitimate love child of a ridiculously wealthy businessman who has refused to contribute to her upbringing – or even acknowledge her existence. In fact, his whole family disavowed her and her mother, leaving them to live in relative poverty while they enjoyed mansions and yachts and holidays in Spain. So, Grace dispatches them, one by one, leaving her father for last to really maximise his suffering.

She executes these murders carefully, spacing them out and varying the means enough to avoid suspicion – they look more like a run of bad luck for the family more than a targeted vengeance plot. She describes her crimes in great detail, explaining to the reader exactly how she lined up the dominoes to fall just as she’d planned – so, how did she wind up in prison, wrongfully convicted no less?

Needless to say, Grace is hilariously dark and bitter. She’s no Lady Macbeth, driven mad by guilt and grief – she’s calm, cool, and collected the whole way through. This makes How To Kill Your Family a highly entertaining read. You’ve got to admire a woman who can anonymously manipulate a teenage boy into hacking her father’s smart house to kill his wife by overheating the sauna, and make you laugh while describing in great detail how she did it.

Of course, it helps that there is a deeply satisfying schadenfreude in watching the overly privileged upper echelons get what’s coming to them, taken down by an amateur vigilante with very little to lose. Sure, it’s a bit gruesome, but the wry tone (and the jaw-dropping lack of self-awareness on Grace’s part) make it not just palatable, but delectable. Grace is snarky and sardonic and clever enough to get away with murder, but has absolutely no idea that she wields the kind of privilege and snobbery she rails against.

There’s a strange (and, I’ll admit, pretty unexpected) left turn in the final chapters of How To Kill Your Family, but I think it helps Mackie wrap up the story in a way that feels satisfying… ish. There’s a point to it, I guess, is what I’m saying. Plus, on reflection I realised there are subtle hints to it early on, if you know to look for them – always the sign of a clever mystery. I highly recommend How To Kill Your Family if you’re feeling some rage and you want to live vicariously through a killer who finds the most outrageous ways possible to blow off steam.

Read How To Kill Your Family on audiobook via Libro.fm here.

My favourite Amazon reviews of How To Kill Your Family:

“Honestly, if I’m going to spend time with awful people, I prefer it to be irl… I’d recommend skipping this one unless you love stories populated by irritating people you’d kinda like to trip while walking done a flight of stairs.” FanGirl
“Way too much self-reflection by the main character.” – Jeff
“I raised my daughter as a single Mom. There is no way she would have killed her father, his three wives and her 9 living half-siblings. Not that her father was rich far from it.” – Rebecka Vigus
“allegedly there’s a 2 book deal and I can only hope the second is a sequel to this. As it is, this book leaves you frustrated like good sex that abruptly ends with you getting kicked unceremoniously out of bed sans orgasm. Can’t in good conscience recommend this unfulfilling experience.” – Blair
“The main character would not shut up. Just trauma-dumping and over-explaining every irrelevant detail like we asked. Babes, I don’t need to know what the wallpaper looked like in 4K.” – Kate

Call Me Evie – J.P. Pomare

April 28, 2026 / Sheree / 0 Comments

Call Me Evie comes recommended “for fans of Room by Emma Donoghue, and Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn“. Across two different settings (“Before” in Melbourne, Australia, and “After” in a coastal small town in New Zealand), the story follows a seventeen-year-old girl trying to piece together her memories of what happened the night everything changed.

In the “After”, a man who the narrator calls Jim has shaved her head, and taken photographs of her in her underwear. He tells her that he is protecting her from herself. He won’t let her go out alone, he keeps her away from any device that might connect to the internet, and he locks her in her bedroom for extended periods. When they’re in public, he calls her Evie.

In the “Before”, her name was Kate. She was a fairly normal seventeen-year-old girl (albeit one with a dead mother and a father who is a semi-famous retired footballer). She had a troublemaker best friend and a crush on a boy called Thom. But some kind of incident occurred that led this man – Jim – to take her across the ocean and obscure her identity.

It’s never quite clear just how much “Evie” remembers about the incident that “Kate” was involved in. Sometimes, she seems quite sure about her vague recollections. Other times, she’s not sure she can remember anything at all. She finds pop psychology books in Jim’s bedroom, with passages underlined about implanting false memories, so she has good reason not to trust her own mind – and, obviously, excellent reason not to trust Jim. Still, she’s unwavering in her desire to escape, and she wants to go home.

The pacing of Call Me Evie is pretty uneven. The mystery is tantalising, but the first half felt quite slow, with just the tiniest drops of plot development here and there – before a veritable flood of information in the second half.

The ‘unreliable narrator’ bit is also somewhat clumsily done, especially in comparison to the recommended equivalent titles (Room and Sharp Objects). The revelations of what each character knows, and how they acted in the aftermath of the incident (not to mention the incident itself), feel inconsistent and slapped together. I suspect the root of this problem is in the characters themselves; they simply aren’t developed enough for the emotional truth of their motivations to be clear for the reader, which makes it difficult to empathise or understand.

The premise of Call Me Evie is a great one – but I feel like Pomare had the idea and then went in search of a plot that he had to backwards engineer to fit, with characters drawn purely in service of the ‘reveal’. That said, I think it would adapt well for the screen; I can definitely see it as an eight-part mini-series for the ABC.

Read Call Me Evie on audiobook via Libro.fm here.