Safe As Houses

Two women experience near-death waking nightmares in this lean, edgy crime novel from van der Vlugt (Shadow Sister). Somewhere in the Netherlands, 43-year-old Mike Kreuger, a murderer who has escaped from a psychiatric prison, confronts single-mother Lisa in her yard and forcibly enters her house, where he holds Lisa and her ailing five-year-old daughter hostage. Senta, an accidental witness, takes off in her car for help, but she drives too fast and runs her car off the road into a canal. Senta, who comes close to drowning before she’s rescued, loses her memory and her ability to communicate. The plot relentlessly hurtles from one increasingly tense scene to the next, as Kreuger steals shred after shred of Lisa’s dignity and self-respect, and Senta struggles to regain her memory. A horrifying if predictable ending closes off a thriller that should not be read alone at night. (Mar.)