Joy Ellis

Joy Ellis proves that you don’t need originality to tell a compelling story. That sounds like a bad thing, like I’m calling Ellis unoriginal. But that isn’t necessarily true. First of all, critics will tell you that every story has already been written, and every new novel tells a variation of the same three or four stories.

Ellis writes psychological thrillers, and most psychological thrillers rely on the same set of tropes and cliches, which is why the synopsis for ‘Beware the Past’ was initially off-putting.

The protagonist was an experienced detective haunted by a previous case. He had to contend with a killer that kept taunting him. Forget about books for a second. Every psychological thriller on TV and in movies uses this blueprint, and frankly, I’m sick of it.

If my book club hadn’t selected the novel for January, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But the first chapter won me over. I read all 369 pages in two days because I couldn’t put the book down. I still don’t care for the psychological thriller genre. But I am willing to make Ellis the exception.