Auntie M was blown away by last year’s Our House, which won Louise Candlish the Crime & Thriller Book of the Year at the Briish Book Awards and was long listed for 2019 Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year. She hurriedly ordered Candlish’s new Those People, just as strong a read in the domestic thriller genre.

Readers are introduced to the residents of Lowland Way, a London suburb of burgeoning worth where cars are moved off the street on Sundays for the children to play. It’s kind of the neighborhood where the adults look out for each other, and we are introduced to many of them when a new couple buy one half of the house on the corner.

Darren and Jodie are vastly different from the other residents. He quickly sets up a used car business on the corner property and begins dramatic renovations on the house, doing the work himself and using whining electric tools from early in the morning throughout the day. When he’s not using power tools, he’s playing music so loudly that the couple in the attached house next door are forced to buy hearing protection for their infant son. And the cars become a huge issue as “Play Out Sunday,” which once won an urban spaces award, becomes a tug of war on the street with serious consequences.

Things soon spiral out of control as the neighborhood rules are not only NOT followed, they’re distinctly flaunted. The local council has a long-winded process for complaints, which seem mostly ineffective, and Darren continues his marauding, while the other residents form a tighter and tighter group of us vs them.

It’s a situation destined to spiral out of control and it soon does with devastating effects.

Candlish tells the story from the viewpoint of the neighbors living closest to Darren and Jodie, and all vary in circumstance and personality, but one thing unites them: their love for their street and their animus against the new couple who won’t conform.

Interspersed with police interviews, the once-united neighbors soon delve to their dark sides, revealed to the reader as things deteriorate and the already fraught pace ramps up.

The observations of the varied temperaments of the residents contrast as the tension escalates; Candlish adds several surprising twists as the darkness grows and spirals down until there’s nothing funny at all about Lowland Way.