The Secret To Writing A Thriller

Creepy hospital scenes abound

I’m like you. I enjoy a good read.

When I find a story that keeps my attention, I like to try and figure out how the author does it.

‘When No One Is Watching’ by Alyssa Cole is a psychological thriller that kept me guessing until the end.

Cole keeps adding small details that don’t add up and that builds the tension as she writes.

Sydney was born and raised in Brooklyn. She recently moved home to take care of her mother. She has just escaped an abusive relationship and is under a lot of stress.

The setting is familiar to the protagonist, but she notices something different. The neighborhood is being gentrified and strange things are happening.

People she has known all her life are selling and moving. ‘For sale’ signs are popping up all over and people are simply disappearing without saying goodbye.

She decides to create a neighborhood walking tour to try and preserve some of the stories of the past. Sydney is joined by Theo, a white newcomer who she isn’t sure she trusts.

Then Sydney starts receiving phone calls offering her a lot of money for her mother’s house, pressuring her to sell.

She discovers the neighbors are being targeted and forced to leave and she begins to fall into paranoid thinking.

She discovers a powerful group of businesspeople that have formed a consortium to prevent opposition. They include a bank, real estate, prison, and a drug company.

Sydney meets a Russian thief who has accidentally ended up with the gentrification group. He suspects there’s something worse than real estate fraud going on and wants to help her figure out what’s happening.

The story builds until it reaches a fate worse than death, the negation of the negation.

At that point, they discover some of the neighbors who had disappeared are being held in an abandoned hospital by the consortium. They kidnapped them, bought their houses, and now they’re using them to test a new drug.

Creepy hospital scenes.

They attempt to rescue their friends, only to become victims themselves.

Then a group of seniors from the community rescue them all and set fire to the facility, which ends the idea that it’s going to be rebuilt as a high rise.

This makes enough of a public news story that the consortium has to back off and they are successful……for now.

Great read!

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