Keep It in the Family

Keep It in the Family by John Marrs is a standalone Psychological Thriller published in 2022 - the ninth novel from one of the genre's most reliably unsettling voices. Mia and Finn Hunter are renovating a derelict property in Bedfordshire, quietly building a life, when a cryptic message scratched into the skirting board stops everything cold: I WILL SAVE THEM FROM THE ATTIC. What they discover up in the eaves is the kind of thing that doesn't wash off. Their dream home was once a murder house, and the evidence never left.

The story unfolds through Multiple POV narration, weaving together the first-person voices of Mia, Finn, and his parents Dave and Debbie, alongside newspaper clippings, true-crime excerpts, and chapters from an unnamed killer's perspective. That structural variety does more than vary pace - it destabilises trust. Marrs is a committed practitioner of the Unreliable Narrator, and here the technique is deployed with real intent, gradually blurring the line between who the reader should fear and who they should pity. The timeline moves across several decades, with Multiple Timelines peeling back the history of the house layer by unsettling layer.

Mia's obsessive investigation into the attic's past sits at the novel's emotional centre. Her fixation carries the hallmarks of Protagonist with Trauma - she can't step away, even as the baby arrives and the practical demands of new motherhood pile up around her. The family dynamics running beneath the surface add further pressure: Finn's parents never warmed to Mia, family loyalty is weaponised, and the question of what people will do to protect their own - or their version of their own - drives the Dark Secrets and Deception that accumulate page by page. There is also something colder running through the novel's core, a thread of Serial Killer psychology rendered in unflinching detail, including the murder of children. Readers sensitive to that subject matter should approach with care.

Marrs writes in short, punchy chapters that keep momentum relentless. Each one ends with just enough withheld to make the next feel essential. The Plot Twists are not decorative - they reframe character motivation and force a re-reading of earlier scenes in a more disturbing light. Publishers Weekly awarded the book a starred review, calling it one dramatic revelation after another. The tone throughout is one of escalating Domestic Suspense, grounded in recognisable anxieties about homeownership, new parenthood, and the families we marry into.

For readers who already know Marrs from The One or What Lies Between Us, this sits among his darkest work. For newcomers, it's the kind of thriller that makes the genre's appeal immediately obvious - compulsive, deeply uncomfortable, and built to be finished in a single sitting.