By Sarah A. Denzil, and published just this year, We Play Games is an Audible original, and currently only available in audio-book format.

The two main narrators, Billie Piper (who plays Effie) and Dan Stevens (who plays Ben), are supported by a broader team of voices, and all are excellent. Moody piano music separates the sections very effectively.



This belongs to the psychological thriller genre, and it is undoubtedly a good listen (another good bus book, in fact).

Effie (short for Euphemia) is married to the highly manipulative Ben May. He has made a tidy fortune conning people (mostly women), and he has various techniques (sometimes suckering them with sob stories into giving him money, sometimes straight-out blackmailing them with secretly filmed footage). He's a nasty piece of work. Effie isn't lovable, either. She, too, gets off on playing little tricks to mess with people. Initially, therefore, she's happy to be part of the Ben May power team, playing to perfection her own seductive role in whatever scheme is afoot at the time.

But then she starts to want out. And Ben is a dangerous person to have as an enemy.

When we meet this unlikeable pair, they've just moved into Ivy Oaks, a gated community in southern England. (What is it about these places that draws mystery writers...? The Therapist also featured one...)


We lived in a gated community in Yogyakarta, and didn't have any of this trouble...

Anyway, Ben immediately starts scouting their new neighbourhood, and weighing up their next "marks". But Effie goes off-script by falling in love with David, one of their neighbours. Actually, he's not all he seems, either...

I won't give plot details away, as the story is everything in this type of book. But by way of summary:

Pluses

1. Denzil shies away from happy endings. Good.

2. She has a great ear for middle-class British conversation.

3. I was initially unsure whether we really needed the plot detail of the malevolent presence that has wreaked minor havoc in this gated community for many years. But I guess it provides a useful red herring or two, and effectively makes the point that vindictiveness (in this case undetected and therefore unpunished) can come in many guises.



Minuses

1. I sometimes felt my credulity was being stretched a little too far. I know these con-merchants do manage to get away with things for long periods (often because their victims are too embarrassed to come forward). But I did find myself wondering whether -- in these days of social media, and electronic footprints, and ubiquitous surveillance cameras -- Ben could have stayed undetected for such a long time. And the Mays are constantly flitting about from house to house (when one area gets too hot for them, they pick another). Presumably they're renting, because the sagas I've seen people involved in when they buy houses in England pretty much preclude any flitting... And for flitters, the Mays do seem to have an awful lot of stuff...

2. Although I definitely wanted to keep listening, I didn't quite get the frisson that such a mess-with-people's-heads character as Ben should have delivered.

Entertaining, though. No regrets.

Postscript: The author's FAQ page is another interesting little insight (after Rebecca F. Kuang's) into the ins and outs of the world of publishing.