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Knopf, 320 pages, $26

Clémence Michallon’s debut thriller, 2023’s “The Quiet Tenant,” was a chilly variation on the serial killer novel and one of the best genre books of that year. The French-born, New York-based author has returned with a sophomore work that is almost as good.

Frida and Gabriel are not biological siblings, though they refer to each other as brother and sister; they met as kids while they were de facto prisoners of a Hudson Valley cult run by the charismatic and amoral Émile. In the narrative present, Frida and Gabriel, now reunited as adults after a period of separation, find themselves at a deluxe Utah hotel when the much younger wife of a tabloid magnate turns up dead. Eventually, the police turn their sights on Gabriel, who was a suspect in the mysterious death of his own wife years earlier.

Michallon shuttles back and forth in time from the sunny luxury of the Ara hotel to the claustrophobic constraints of Émile’s cult and gradually reveals the secrets that bind Frida and Gabriel and the reasons for their extended estrangement. Diverging from her debut, Michallon structures “Our Last Resort” as a whodunit, though the murder at its centre is only one of the mysteries swirling in this complex, serpentine narrative. The author is as good at developing character as she is at creating a finely calibrated plot; the result, if not as creepily unsettling as her earlier book, is nevertheless a worthwhile successor, providing further evidence of a major talent at work.

Don’t Let Him In

Lisa Jewell

Atria, 368 pages, $26.99

Another of 2023’s best genre titles was “None of This Is True” by U.K. author Lisa Jewell. The story of a podcaster and her latest subject — a woman who randomly approaches her to say they share a birthday — that novel excelled in large part because the nature of truth remained stubbornly slippery.

Not so with Jewell’s latest, in which the villain is about as clear-cut as they come. Nick Radcliffe falls into a relationship with Nina Swann, who has inherited her late husband’s restaurant empire after his death. What Nina doesn’t know is that Nick is also Alistair Grey, husband of flower shop owner Martha and father of her youngest child. As Nina’s daughter, Ash, becomes suspicious of Nick’s prolonged and repeated absences, she begins investigating his whereabouts and gradually discovers his history of con artistry and deception.

Jewell splits her narrative between Ash, Martha, and the con man himself, who narrates in the first person from the past. This is necessary to fill in crucial details of the plot but it also poses a dilemma for the author: she has crafted her antagonist as a pathological liar but put him in a position where he must be accepted as an unreliable narrator to everyone except the reader. The dissonance is not fatal — the chameleonic character is ironic and self-justifying enough to make his narration work — but it does add a stumbling block to a story that is already reminiscent of Donald E. Westlake’s screenplay for “The Stepfather,” among other similar stories, both fictional and otherwise.

The Cleaner

Mary Watson

Random House Canada, 400 pages, $26

In the debut adult novel from Mary Watson, a South African native now based in Ireland, Esmie takes up a position as the hired help for a trio of well-to-do women in a gated Irish community. What her employers don’t know is that Esmie has ulterior motives for working her way into their homes: she is seeking revenge for her brother, Nico, a former scholarship student who was the possible lover of one of the women and who became addicted to drugs while in their company, eventually getting ejected from school and landing in a coma.

The novel addresses the same kind of class disparities as Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning film “Parasite,” commenting (at times a bit too heavily) on the privilege of the rich families and Esmie’s invisibility, which allows her to pursue her investigation relatively unimpeded by the wealthy folks who assume she is unintelligent and unskilled. Her growing attraction to Linc, the husband of one of her employers, provides additional complexity, as does her fractured relationship with Simone, her best friend who fell out with her after courting and marrying Nico.

Watson displays a firm hand on her plot and a good sense of pacing in yet another novel that alternates between the present and the past, while gradually doling out secrets and connections between the various characters. The entitled women — Amber, Isabelle and Ceanna — who employ Esmie are generally well developed and invite empathy, a nice change from the stereotypical presentation of the amoral rich in current fiction. And Watson offers one jaw-dropping twist in a narrative that maintains the courage of its convictions: this one doesn’t end entirely happily, for anyone.

The Spiral Staircase

Ethel Lina White

Pushkin Vertigo, 336 pages, $23.95

One literary antecedent for Esmie in “The Cleaner” is Helen Capel, the mousy servant in the British home of Professor Warren and his family in Ethel Lina White’s classic 1933 mystery, now reissued by Pushkin Vertigo. Someone is stalking the countryside killing women; as a storm rages outside and the professor orders the rambling house sealed off, Helen begins to suspect that the murderer may already be inside.

White’s 1936 novel “The Wheel Spins” was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as “The Lady Vanishes.” (It has also been reissued under that title by Pushkin Vertigo.) Originally titled “Some Must Watch,” “The Spiral Staircase” has been filmed four times, most famously in 1946 with Dorothy McGuire, George Brent and Ethel Barrymore. The story is suitably gothic, with its shadowy manse, strange noises in the night, and the ubiquitous storm to heighten the macabre aspects of the tale.

Certain elements have not aged well — a masculine-appearing nurse is suspected of being a man in drag — but the novel retains its central tension and provides a template for those curious about the literary tradition in which writers like Mary Watson now operate.