The Other Passenger

The Other Passenger

by Louise Candlish

Narrated by Steven Mackintosh

Unabridged — 10 hours, 47 minutes

The Other Passenger

The Other Passenger

by Louise Candlish

Narrated by Steven Mackintosh

Unabridged — 10 hours, 47 minutes

Audiobook (Digital)

$20.87
FREE With a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime
$0.00

Free with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime

$23.99 Save 13% Current price is $20.87, Original price is $23.99. You Save 13%.
START FREE TRIAL

Already Subscribed? 

Sign in to Your BN.com Account


Listen on the free Barnes & Noble NOOK app


Related collections and offers

FREE

with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription

Or Pay $20.87 $23.99

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Louise Candlish’s The Other Passenger was a hit in the UK and will debut here as a trade paperback original. As if the life of a commuter wasn’t stressful enough, Candlish depicts what it’s also like to be caught up in a case of mistaken identity. Or maybe not mistaken? No spoilers here — and even if we wanted, we couldn’t. Have your train ticket handy and don’t count on the conductor reminding you not to miss your stop.

 
One of CrimeReads's Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2021
Longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier 2021 Crime Novel of the Year

The “queen of the sucker-punch twist” (Ruth Ware, #1 New York Times bestselling author) and author of Our House weaves an unputdownable page-turner about a commuter who becomes a suspect in his friend's mysterious disappearance.

It all happens so quickly. One day you're living the dream, commuting to work by ferry with your charismatic neighbor Kit in the seat beside you. The next, Kit hasn't turned up for the boat and his wife, Melia, has reported him missing.

When you get off at your stop, the police are waiting. Another passenger saw you and Kit arguing on the boat home the night before and the police say that you had a reason to want him dead. You protest. You and Kit are friends-ask Melia, she'll vouch for you. And who exactly is this other passenger pointing the finger? What do they know about your lives?

No, whatever danger followed you home last night, you are innocent, totally innocent.

Aren't you?

Editorial Reviews

SEPTEMBER 2021 - AudioFile

Nothing is exactly what it seems in Louise Candlish’s expertly plotted mystery. Narrator Steven Mackintosh offers up a chilling performance as Jamie Buckby. Jamie and Claire live well on Claire’s income. Due to extreme claustrophobia, Jamie commutes to work by boat. He begins a friendship of a sort with fellow commuter Kit. Kit and his gorgeous wife, Melia, both actors, are nearing financial ruin. When Kit disappears, Jamie suddenly finds himself the focus of a police investigation. Mackintosh keeps Jamie believably innocent. His portrayals of women are intelligent and believable. When things heat up, you can almost hear Jamie’s heart pounding in Mackintosh’s voice. Candlish brings extraordinary psychological insights into play, and Mackintosh delivers the emotions. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

★ 05/17/2021

This ingenious psychological thriller from British author Candlish (Those People) has more bends and turns than the Thames River, which plays a significant role in the action-driven plot. New mates Jamie Buckby, once a high-salaried marketing executive but now a low-paid barista, and Kit Roper, who works in insurance, are primarily traveling companions on the 7:20 a.m. ferry river bus from St. Mary’s into central London. One morning, during Christmas week and after an evening of holiday binge drinking, Kit doesn’t show up. Suspicion falls on Jamie when it seems as though he may have a motive for murder. Enter the women in the thickening scheme of things. Jamie lives unmarried in high style with moneyed real estate agent Clare; Kit lives with his assistant, Melia, and they struggle to make ends meet and envy Jamie and Clare their townhouse. Everyone seems to have something to hide, piling one lie on top of another. Dalliances form, alliances abound, and deception is rampant. Candlish’s clever commuter horror offers enough stupefying chills to reward old fans and invite new ones. Agent: Sheila Crowley, Curtis Brown (U.K.). (July)

From the Publisher

This book stands apart for its expert pacing and plotting, and for its exploration of the complexity of financial disparities in relationships, friendships between generations, and the London housing crisis . . . Sure to please readers looking for thrillers in the vein of Lisa Jewell and Aimee Molloy; a single-sitting page-turner with character and thematic depth.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“This ingenious psychological thriller from British author Candlish (Those People) has more bends and turns than the Thames River . . . Dalliances form, alliances abound, and deception is rampant. Candlish’s clever commuter horror offers enough stupefying chills to reward old fans and invite new ones.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Candlish never lets the tension slacken as deep discussions of income disparity, aging, love and loss keep readers’ loyalties shifting between characters. There’s the potential for at least one character, perhaps more, to appear in another novel. It would be thrilling to see them again. The villains in The Other Passenger are never held at arm’s length. We care, even as their ordinary lives turn monstrous.” —BookPage (starred review)

"Candlish’s story is a stiletto take on desire and ambition and the power of possession, and one of the most entertaining and seductive thrillers coming this summer.” —Minneapolis Sar Tribune

“Candlish brings a Hitchcockian sense of the uncanny to her latest thriller, which features two friendly neighbors, co-commuters on the local ferry. When one of them goes missing, the other finds himself under accusation. Their friendship is real, but our protagonist is forced to question everything he thought he knew about her relationships and the community around him.” —Crimereads

"Psychological suspense at its most elegant and sinister." —A.J. Finn

"Just brilliant; gripping from the first page with an incredible first-person narrative and a sense of place that pulls you through the pages fast enough to make your head spin. Louise Candlish just gets better and better. I love her." —Lisa Jewell

"I'm a HUGE fan of Louise Candlish's writing, but she really knocks it out of the park with this one, with its Hitchcockian atmosphere of mounting dread and almost unbearable suspense, building to its astonishing conclusion. A must-read." —Lucy Foley

"Louise Candlish is the queen of the sucker-punch twist." —Ruth Ware

"A gripping read with a brilliant first-person narrative. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. It’s so good!" —B.A. Paris

Library Journal

★ 06/04/2021

Nearing 50, Jamie Buckby has a panic attack on the London Tube that goes viral. He resigns from his communications job and works as a barista while figuring out his next step, and his partner Clare now provides the household monetary support. One evening, Clare invites her twentysomething colleague Melia and Melia's boyfriend Kit over for a dinner party. An intergenerational friendship develops between the couples, particularly between Jamie and Kit, who both commute on the same river bus. But as their lives become more intertwined, Jamie and Clare learn that Melia and Kit live beyond their means, and start to become alarmed at Kit's increased recreational drug use. After having an altercation with Jamie on the river bus, Kit goes missing. Jamie is under suspicion for causing Kit's disappearance when a mysterious unnamed fellow passenger on the river bus makes a report of the fight. Jamie knows, however, that he's innocent of any wrongdoing in Kit's disappearance. Candlish (Those People) concocts a twisty plot that weaves together the yearlong evolution of a friendship and the investigation into Kit's disappearance. This book stands apart for its expert pacing and plotting, and for its exploration of the complexity of financial disparities in relationships, friendships between generations, and the London housing crisis. VERDICT Sure to please readers looking for thrillers in the vein of Lisa Jewell and Aimee Molloy; a single-sitting page-turner with character and thematic depth.—Jon Jeffryes, Grand Valley State Univ., MI

SEPTEMBER 2021 - AudioFile

Nothing is exactly what it seems in Louise Candlish’s expertly plotted mystery. Narrator Steven Mackintosh offers up a chilling performance as Jamie Buckby. Jamie and Claire live well on Claire’s income. Due to extreme claustrophobia, Jamie commutes to work by boat. He begins a friendship of a sort with fellow commuter Kit. Kit and his gorgeous wife, Melia, both actors, are nearing financial ruin. When Kit disappears, Jamie suddenly finds himself the focus of a police investigation. Mackintosh keeps Jamie believably innocent. His portrayals of women are intelligent and believable. When things heat up, you can almost hear Jamie’s heart pounding in Mackintosh’s voice. Candlish brings extraordinary psychological insights into play, and Mackintosh delivers the emotions. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID: 2940173267436
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication date: 07/20/2021
Edition description: Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1 1
December 27, 2019

Like all commuter horror stories, mine begins in the mean light of early morning—or, at least, officially it does.

Kit isn’t there when I get to St Mary’s Pier for the 7:20 river bus to Waterloo, but that’s not unusual; he’s had his fair share of self-inflicted sick days this festive season. An early morning sailing calls for a strong stomach at the best of times, but for the mortally hungover it’s literally water torture (trust me, I know). In any case, he always arrives after me. Though we live just five minutes apart and he passes right by Prospect Square to get to the pier, we gave up walking down together after the first week, when his spectacularly poor timekeeping—and my neurotic punctuality—became apparent.

No, Kit prefers to stroll on just before they close the gangway, raising his hand in greeting, confident I’ve secured our preferred seats, the portside set of four by the bar. At St Mary’s, boarding is at the front of the boat and so I’ll watch him as he moves down the aisle, hands glancing off the metal poles—as much for style as balance—before sliding in next to me with an easy grin. Even if he’s been up late partying, he always smells great, like an artisan loaf baked with walnuts and figs (“Kit smells so millennial,” Clare said once, which was almost certainly a criticism of me and my Gen X smell of, I don’t know, stale dog biscuits).

Get us, he’ll say, idly scanning the other passengers, snug in their cream leather seats. It’s one of his catchphrases: Get us. Pity the poor saps crushed on the overland train or suffocating on the Tube—we’re commuting by catamaran. Out there, there are seagulls.

Also, sewage, I’ll reply, because we’ve got a nice sardonic banter going, Kit and me.

Well, we used to.

I clear the lump in my throat just as the boat gives a sudden diesel rumble, as if the two acts are connected. On departure, information streams briskly across the overhead screens—Calling at Woolwich, North Greenwich, Greenwich, Surrey Quays—though by now the route is so imprinted I pay little attention. Through the silver sails of the Thames Barrier and past the old aggregate works and industrial depots of the early stretch; then you’re at the yacht club and into the dinghy-strewn first loop, the residential towers of the peninsula on your left as you head towards the immense whitehead of the O2 Arena. Strung high above the river is the cable car that links the peninsula to the Royal Docks, but I won’t allow myself to think about my only trip to date on that. What was done that night. What was said.

Well, maybe just briefly.

I turn my face from the empty seat beside me, as if Kit is there after all, reading my mind with its secret, unclean thoughts.

“Back again on Friday,” he grumbled on the boat on Monday night, bemoaning his firm’s insistence on normal working hours for this orphan weekday between Boxing Day and the weekend. “Fucking cheapskates.” Normally, if he misses the boat, I’ll text him a word or two of solidarity: Heavy night? Maybe some beer emojis or, if I was involved in the session, a nauseated face. But I don’t do that today. I’ve hardly used my phone since before Christmas and I admit I’ve enjoyed the break. That old-school nineties feeling of being incommunicado.

We’re motoring now past the glass steeples of Canary Wharf towards Greenwich, the only approach that still has the power to rouse my London pride: those twin domes of the Old Royal Naval College, the emerald park beyond. I watch the bar staff serve iced snowflake cookies with the teas and coffees—it’s surprising how many people want to eat this stuff first thing in the morning, especially my age group, neither young enough to care about their silhouette (such a Melia kind of word) nor close enough to the end to give a damn about health warnings. Caffeine and sugar, caffeine and sugar: on it goes until the sun is over the yardarm and then, well, we’re all sailors in this country, aren’t we? We’re all boozers.

Only when we dock in front of the Cutty Sark do I finally reach for my phone, reacquaint myself with my communications of Monday night and the aftermath of the water rats’ Christmas drinks. I scan my inbox for Kit’s name. My last text to him was spur-of-the-moment and tellingly free of emojis:

Just YOU wait.

Sent at 11:38 p.m. on Monday, it’s double-ticked as read, but there has been no reply. There have been, however, five missed calls from Melia, as well as three voicemails. I really should listen to them. But, instead, I hear Clare’s voice from yesterday morning, the “proper” talk we had under a gunmetal northern sky four hundred miles from here:

You need to cut ties.

Not just him, Jamie. Her, as well.

There’s something not right about those two.

Now she tells me. And I slip the phone back in my pocket, buying myself a few extra minutes of innocence.

At Surrey Quays, Gretchen gets on. The only female water rat, she’s prim in her narrow, petrol-blue wool coat, carrying one of those squat bamboo cups for her flat white. Though I’m in our usual spot, she settles in the central section several rows ahead. Weird. I move up the aisle and drop into the seat next to her. You can’t usually take your pick so easily on the 7:20, but the boat is half empty—even excusing the lucky bastards who don’t have to return to work till the New Year, I have to admit the river’s no place to be in these temperatures. It’s one of the coldest days of the year, breath visible from people’s mouths on the quayside and from the heating systems of the buildings.

“Jamie, hi,” she says, not quite turning, not quite smiling. Her lashes are navy spider’s legs and there’s a feathering of pink in the whites of her eyes.

“Thought you were blanking me there,” I say, cheerfully. “Good Christmas with your family?” She’s been somewhere like Norwich, if I remember. There are healthy, uncomplicated parents, a brother and a sister, a brace of nieces and nephews.

She shrugs, sips her coffee. “It’s all about the kids, isn’t it? And I haven’t got any.”

There’s really no need for her to spell this out: we’re connected, our little group, by our childlessness, our freedom to put ourselves before everyone else. To self-indulge, take risks. No parent would do what I’ve done this last year, or at least not so readily, so heedlessly.

“What about yesterday? Do any sales shopping?”

Gretchen blinks, surprised, like I’ve suggested she rode a unicorn naked down the middle of Regent Street. She’s clear-skinned, delicately feminine, though in temperament a woman who likes to be one of the boys, who laments the complexities of her own gender and thinks men simpler allies (a dangerous generalization, in my opinion).

“You all right, Gretch?”

“Yeah, just a bit tired.”

“I don’t know where Kit is this morning. I’m sure he said he was working today. Did he say anything to you?”

“Nope.” There’s an edge to her tone I’m familiar with, a peculiarly female strain of pique. I’ve wondered now and then if there might be something between Kit and her. Maybe there was some indiscretion on Monday night, maybe she worries what I saw. Did I say something I shouldn’t have? God, the “shouldn’t haves” are really building: shouldn’t have got so drunk, shouldn’t have let him goad me.

Shouldn’t have sent him that last text.

“What happened there?” she asks, noticing my bandaged right hand.

“Oh, nothing major. I burned my thumb at work. Didn’t I show you on Monday?”

“I don’t think so.” Noticing the music piping through the PA—the same loop of festive tunes we’ve been subjected to since early December—Gretchen groans. “I can’t take any more of this ‘happy holidays’ crap, it’s so fake. You know what? I think I might just book a trip somewhere sunny. Call in sick for a few days and get out of here.”

“Could be expensive over New Year.”

“Not if I go somewhere the Foreign Office says is a terrorist risk.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Anyway,” she adds, “what’s another grand or two when you’re already in the red?”

“True.” But I don’t want to talk about money. Lately, it’s the only thing I hear about. We pass the police HQ in Wapping, close to the zone change at which the westbound boats are required to reduce speed precisely as passenger impatience starts to build. We’re entering the London the world recognizes—Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, the Shard—and as the landmarks rise, Gretchen and Kit and their troubles sink queasily from my mind.

“Enjoy Afghanistan, if you go,” I say, when she prepares to disembark at Blackfriars for her office near St Paul’s.

She smiles. “I was thinking more like Morocco.”

“Much better. Let us know.” My joker’s grin shrinks the moment the doors close behind her and I rest my cheek on the headrest, stare out of the window. Seven fifty in the morning and I’m already done in. The water is high as we sail towards Waterloo, sucking at the walls with its grimy brown gums, and the waterside wonderland of lights that glows so magically after dark is exposed for the fraudulent web of cables that it is. It’s as quick to get off at Westminster Pier and walk across the bridge as it is to wait for the boat to make a U-turn and dock at the Eye, but I choose to sit it out. I hardly register the pitch and roll that once threw me into alarm or, for that matter, the great wheel itself, its once miraculous-seeming physics. Disembarking, I ignore the waiting ticket holders and stroll up the causeway with sudden sadness for how quickly the brain turns the wondrous into the routine: work, love, friendship, traveling to work by catamaran. Or is it just me?

It’s at precisely that moment, that thought—right on the beat of me—that a man steps towards me and flashes some sort of ID.

“James Buckby?”

“Yes.” I stop and look at him. Tall, late twenties, mixed race. Business-casual dress, sensitive complexion, truthful eyes.

“Detective Constable Ian Parry, Metropolitan Police.” He presses the ID closer to my face so I can see the distinctive blue banner, the white lettering, and straightaway my heart pulses with a horrible suction, as if it’s constructed of tentacles, not chambers.

“Is something wrong?”

“We think there might be, yes. Christopher Roper has been reported missing. He’s a good friend of yours, I gather?”

“Christopher?” It takes a moment to connect the name to Kit. “What d’you mean, missing?” I’m starting to tremble now. “I mean, I noticed he wasn’t on the boat, but I just thought...” I falter. In my mind I see my phone screen, alerts for those missed calls from Melia. Her heart-shaped face, her murmured voice humid in my ear.

We’re different, Jamie. We’re special.

The guy gestures to the river wall to my left, where a male colleague stands apart from the tourists, watching us. Plainclothes, which means CID, a criminal investigation. I read somewhere that police only go in twos if they think there’s a risk to their safety; is that what they judge me to be?

“Melia gave you my name, I suppose?”

Not commenting, my ambusher concentrates on separating me from the groups gathering and dispersing at the pier’s entrance, owners of a hundred purposes preferable to my own. “So, if we can trouble you for a minute, Mr. Buckby?”

“Of course.” As I allow myself to be led towards his colleague, it’s the coy, old-style phrasing I get stuck on. Trouble you for a minute, like trouble is a passing trifle of an idea, a little Monday-morning fun.

Well, as it transpires, it’s fucking neither.

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews