Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: The Hunted by Roz Nay

Roz Nay is a Canadian author based in British Columbia. Her first novel was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award and her second novel was nominated for the Crime Writers of Canada Best Thriller of 2020. Her third book The Hunted was nominated for CWC’s Best Crime Novel 2022. 

The Hunted (S&S Canada Adult, 2022) is about Stevie Erickson, who decided after the loss of her grandmother to leave the small Maine town she grew up in and go with her boyfriend Jacob to a small island off the coast of Tanzania where he found a job as a diver for an ecotourist camp. The change was disorienting for them both. Neither of them were used to travel of any kind, much less international tourism, so they naturally gravitated to Leo and Tamsin when they met them, a charming cosmopolitan couple accustomed to globetrotting. Alliances among the four shift and shift again, setting off a chain reaction of events.

Stevie became convinced that someone was watching her. She was locked into a hostel bathroom in the middle of the night when ostensibly no one else was around. The key to their room on the resort where they stayed before going to the ecotourism camp disappeared. But Jacob tried to convince her she was reacting to her grief and the multiple drastic changes in time zone and location. The evidence of a stalker was clear.

Well written. The book is narrated in the alternating voices of Stevie and Leo, not one but two unreliable narrators; their interpretations of the same event vary wildly and provide a clear window into their own confused mental processes. The reader is left wondering what really did happen. Vivid description of the island and student hostel settings. While the story is suspenseful and there’s a nice twist at the end, I was left feeling that tension could have ratcheted higher here and there to make the impact of the ending stronger. For fans of psychological thrillers.

 

·         Publisher: ‎S&S Canada Adult; Export edition (July 5, 2022)

·         Language: ‎English

·         Paperback: ‎288 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1982198036

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1982198039

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2023

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.