Wild Animal

Swiss novelist Dicker (The Alaska Sanders Affair) delivers a rollicking heist thriller centered on two couples with carefully concealed secrets. Geneva banker Arpad Braun and his attorney wife, Sophie, lead charmed lives until they invite acquaintances Greg and Karine to Arpad’s 40th birthday party, where both become obsessed with Sophie. Greg lusts after her, spying on her from the woods behind her house, while Karine longs for her confidence and friendship. Greg, a senior SWAT team officer, is gunning for a promotion. As his obsession with Sophie—who has many secrets of her own—grows, he installs a police surveillance camera in the Brauns’ bedroom and records Arpad agreeing to help an old friend with a major robbery. As Dicker gradually reveals Arpad’s criminal past and the fraught details of his and Sophie’s romance, a complex map of betrayals and hidden motives emerges that links the pair to Greg and Karine. Though the prose can be limp and the characters lack depth, the climactic heist sequence is undeniably propulsive, and Dicker maintains tension with his use of multiple timelines. This entertains. (Oct.)