The Couple Next Door

Anne and Marco Conti leave their baby sleeping while they go to a small birthday dinner party next door at their friend’s home. Cora is fast asleep, the baby monitor by her side. She generally sleeps through the night and they are a mere 20 feet away. They check on her every half hour. Between 12:30 and 1:30 she disappears. Did the flirtatious hostess that distracted Marco outside have something to do with it? Were Anne’s very wealthy parents being targeted through their only grandchild? Did a random stranger break into their home? From the very beginning what seemed like a random motiveless crime becomes a complicated twist of deceptive characters and a myriad of secrets and lies. It sounds like a great who done it. Unfortunately, the characters were outlandish, unlikeable and exaggerated figures. They spoke in robotic choppy conversation and I could not wait to be finished. Sorry, reader friends, I love a good psycho figure out thriller – think Gone Girl, Girl on the Train, The Widow - but this one does not make the list.