The Beresford by Will Carver

Summary:

Just outside the city – any city, every city – is a grand, spacious but affordable apartment building called The Beresford.

There’s a routine at The Beresford.

For Mrs May, every day’s the same: a cup of cold, black coffee in the morning, pruning roses, checking on her tenants, wine, prayer and an afternoon nap. She never leaves the building.

Abe Schwartz also lives at The Beresford. His housemate, Sythe, no longer does. Because Abe just killed him. 

In exactly sixty seconds, Blair Conroy will ring the doorbell to her new home and Abe will answer the door. They will become friends. Perhaps lovers. 

And, when the time comes for one of them to die, as is always the case at The Beresford, there will be sixty seconds to move the body before the next unknowing soul arrives at the door.

Because nothing changes at The Beresford, until the doorbell rings…

Eerie, dark, superbly twisted and majestically plotted, The Beresford is the stunning standalone thriller from one of crime fiction’s most exciting names.

My Review:

There is something about Will Carver’s novels, I have been lucky enough to have read all of them so far and loved each one and his latest The Beresford (Orenda Books) is out in bookshops now and this is right up there with Carver’s previous novels but just be aware of the doorbell! There is something creepy about Will Carver and his books and his latest is no exception. It is dark, eerie and chilling.

Welcome to The Beresford this old building that has apartments, and some rather interesting tenants, except many won’t be around for long and so we hear the doorbell ring that heralds a new arrival.

The rates are cheap at The Beresford and so they come. We meet Mrs May whose age no-one really knows but guess. She has a daily routine; she makes coffee and lets it go cold because that is how she likes it. She even prays for many of the residents that come to stay. She prunes the roses and believes she knows everything that goes on at The Beresford.

Then we meet Abe, who seems like a nice guy, but Abe has just killed Sythe and has exactly sixty seconds to move the body. But Abe is a good person and did not want to kill Sythe. But just how is he going to dispose of the body?

The doorbell rings and a new arrival has come to stay, Blair Conroy has arrived finally away from her devout religious parents and now has the freedom to do want every she wants even with the bedroom door open.

Death awaits those who come to stay at The Beresford when the doorbell rings there is that dread of knowing that murder will follow, and each new arrival is a character, and each has their own story to be told.

Will Carver does write brilliant books and there is real humour to be found within the pages of The Beresford and you the reader are going to meet the residents as they arrive, their fate is sealed but are YOU going to judge them before they meet their fate?

But why are the people here committing murder? If the walls could speak what tales, they would tell of the goings on in this old apartment building. Of the people that come to stay and ultimately die. The Beresford is just a brilliantly chilling read in a way that only Will Carver can create. Is that the doorbell I have just heard?

276 Pages.

My thanks to Karen Sullivan (Orenda Books) for the review copy of The Beresford by Will Carver.

The Beresford by Will Carver is released through published by Orenda Books and is now available through Waterstones, Amazon and through your local independent bookshop or through Bookshop.org that supports your local independent bookshop. UK Bookshop.org