One of the problems with having a runaway success with a side project is that it tends to cast a shadow over the rest of an author’s work. You feel that John Banville may sometimes resent the way that people have rushed to embrace Benjamin Black (although I’m sure his bank manager isn’t complaining). Joyce Carol Oates’s mysteries written under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith outsold all but a handful of the (many) books published under her own name. Stephanie Merritt (also an Observer critic) has written a series of superior literary thrillers, from her excellent debut, Gaveston, in 2002, to While You Sleep (2018). Her novels are about circles of friends trapped in literal or metaphorical crucibles, about privilege and failure, obsession and revenge. That Merritt’s output has been rather thin is down to the fact that her alter ego, SJ Parris, has become one of the most successful writers of historical fiction in the country, selling more than 1m copies of her Giordano Bruno series of mysteries.
Now Merritt has returned to her own name for Storm, another literary thriller of the highest quality. Jo, our hero, is reeling from the death of her husband, Oliver. Their marriage was far from perfect – Oliver was controlling and self-centred – but his death has opened up a void in her life, one that she fills by cosseting their daughter, Hannah. When an invitation arrives to go to a chateau in France where she and Oliver holidayed in the early months of their relationship, she leaps at the chance, even though it means leaving Hannah behind. She wants to go away with Arlo, Max and Leo, Oliver’s closest friends, knowing that it is a way of staying close to him. They, she realises, are still “trying to work out what they owed her, for his sake, in terms of attention and inclusion”.
Max, a journalist, has been called away on a story at the last minute and so his girlfriend, the alluring and much younger Storm, has come along without him. There are echoes of François Ozon’s Swimming Pool and Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty: what happens when someone young and liberated enters a world of more rigid morals. Storm swims naked, smokes joints, fills the prim mothers, Nina and Cressida, with a mixture of horror and jealousy. Then tragedy strikes, and all eyes turn to Storm. The ending is blistering, brilliantly paced and intricately plotted: the perfect poolside read.
• Storm by Stephanie Merritt is published by HarperCollins (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
