send all mutants to the moon for ever

last november, very bored and in need of grist for the audiobook mill, i typed "thriller" into libby and downloaded the first few audiobooks that came up. in this way i was introduced to riley sager, an award winning author of ten mediocre thrillers who - SORRY HES MARRIED TO A MAN? THIS MAKES THE SINGLE TRAGIC HOMOSEXUAL IN SEVERAL OF THESE MUCH FUNNIER.

anyway the books are compellingly mediocre. the concepts are often good and then they totally whiff it. but I keep reading them and trying to guess what happens. here is my tier list in progress, with notes. this WILL spoil many of the books in question so be warned.

A Tier

with a vengeance- MY DUMBASS TRAIN REVENGE GIRL ANNA!!! A tier for the central idea and the weird characters despite the stupid ending. I've gathered you all here on this train to reveal your nefarious deeds but NOT to kill you, yes I keep having violent fantasies about killing you but this is a nonlethal revenge train, I was as shocked by the killing as you were. btw, everyone on reddit hates this one, which is fair bc it kind of sucks. and the FBI offers her a job at the end?!

protagonist problems: laser focused on her revenge plot since teenage years

weirdest twist: protagonist mistakes her ex for her brother's ghost because he looks like her brother because he and her brother were half brothers.

suspicious hunk: she gets two, dante the childhood forbidden love and seamus the devoted henchman

B Tier

home before dark - B tier because the narrator's dad basically wrote the Amityville horror about her childhood and she grew up under that shadow. the actual resolution is not that interesting but it's fun that she's known her parents are lying her whole life and it's fun that the flashbacks are all in-universe horror fiction.

protagonist problems: grief mostly

weirdest twist: mom of murder victim copes by sneaking through a secret passage into the room of the girl who lives there now and staring at her

suspicious hunk: dane the handyman ex-con

C Tier

the house across the lake - C??? tier it was a ghost. protagonist is kind of stupid but there's homoromanticism

protagonist problems: alcoholism. killed her serial killer husband. doesn't understand how cops work

weirdest twist: ITS A GHOST

suspicious hunk: the worst of them all, boone the widower ex-cop who tells you to join alcoholics anonymous

D Tier

middle of the night - D tier. unmemorable. heartwarming kid annoyed me. only male protagonist and he doesn't get a suspicious beefcake red herring like all the others: sad!

protagonist problems: grief mostly again. paranoid

weirdest twist: local rich guy was doing psychic experiments but that was largely unrelated to the mystery. OR: teen gets into fitness after finding his dead brother's gay muscle magazines

suspicious hunk: N/A

the only one left - D tier. it was clawing its way up the tierlist near the end due to the dueling unreliable past narratives, but then squandered all of that goodwill and more with the most infuriating twist of all riley sager twists, and I'm including the ghost

protagonist problems: blamed for enabling her mom's suicide

weirdest twist: i actually think sister 1, held captive by sister 2, writing her own life story but with the names swapped, so you start to notice inconsistencies as it goes on, is cool. unfortunately, the literal last pages of the book reveal that the paralyzed woman was pretending to be paralyzed for fifty years