The Last Renter: An Archer Island Thriller

In Mason’s stirring follow-up to Thickafog, 68-year-old Evan Olson and his wife, Hilda, become entangled with an emotionally disturbed woman on Maine’s remote Archer Island. After escaping the Massachusetts psychiatric hospital where she was sent for killing a young Harvard student, 20-something Millicent Kilvert murders her mother, then flees to Archer Island and rents out the Olsons’ detached bungalow. Evan and Hilda, meanwhile, know nothing of her past. Shortly after Evan takes a ferry to the mainland to care for his and Hilda’s pregnant daughter, a raging storm causes islandwide power outages, leaving Hilda trapped at home. Meanwhile, Millicent’s behavior grows increasingly erratic, and Mason weaves in flashbacks that detail the childhood trauma she endured at the hands of her stepfather, Vincent, which drove her to develop a violent alter ego named Maude. Now, with Maude in the driver’s seat, Millicent proves a threat to herself, Hilda, and the other residents of Archer Island. Mason sustains nerve-shredding suspense in scenes set at the Olsons’ storm-battered farmhouse, and he treats his potentially lurid premise with sensitivity and care. By the time the novel arrives at its affecting conclusion, readers will be wowed. Mason has done it again. (Apr.)