Before She Knew Him

Henrietta, known as Hen, lives with her husband Lloyd in a quiet suburb outside Boston, Massachusetts. She works as an illustrator, and the right medication keeps her bipolar disorder under control. Life is steady until she meets the couple next door.

In the office of her neighbor Matthew, Hen notices a sports trophy on a shelf. It looks identical to one taken from the home of a young man who was murdered two years earlier. The case was never solved, and Hen has been fixated on it for a long time.

She cannot tell whether she has found a killer or whether her mind is slipping again. Back in college she became so sure a fellow student was guilty that she hurt a classmate, and she has not forgotten it. Nobody around her takes her suspicions seriously, and the longer she watches Matthew, the more she fears he is planning something terrible.

This is a psychological suspense novel told through an unreliable-minded protagonist, where the reader shares her doubt about what is real. The tension comes from her isolation and from a confrontation in a dark parking lot, after which Matthew knows she has been watching him.