I was totally gripped by B P Walter’s the Dinner Guest, and devoured it in less than 48 hours. It has a sort of boxset binge-worthiness.
At the heart of the story are this seemingly perfect couple, Matthew and Charlie, who regularly beguile Instagram with their family photos. One evening, their idyll is shattered when Matthew is stabbed to death at their dining table; a crime to which Rachel, their uninvited guest immediately confesses. Months earlier, Rachel leaves her hometown on a mission to infiltrate Matthew and Charlie’s lives. She succeeds despite being out of place in their upper-middle class, privileged milieu.
Needless to say, class is a major theme of the story. The comedy of manners, added to the many layers of intrigue, makes the book even more compelling. The characters don’t have any great depth to them, but this hardly matters as none of them are what they appear to be in the first place.