THE TENANT, Freida McFadden’s latest novel, proves that she is still at the top of her psychological thriller game.

The bulk of the story is told from the perspective of Blake Porter, a VP of marketing who is on the rise and living with his fiancée, Krista, in a nice Manhattan brownstone. Blake is on a roll...until he is not. When he gets called into his boss’s office at the end of a long workday, he is completely blindsided by accusations that he sold trade secrets to the competition. Despite his protests, he is fired without severance or unemployment.

"McFadden is always a smart plotter, but this may be her finest story to date.... This outstanding psychological thriller is sure to please her countless fans."

When Blake breaks the news to Krista, they agree to hunker down and live within their means and off of her salary at the laundromat she runs. After a few weeks of unemployment, they recognize that something more is needed and reluctantly decide to post a rental notice for the additional room on the top level of their brownstone. The interview process is not without drama, especially when they encounter an odd older woman who claims to be a psychic. She warns Krista that Blake is going to stab her to death one day in that very apartment.

Things seems to take a turn for the better when a waitress from a nearby Greek diner looks at the place and seems very normal. Her name is Whitney, and both Blake and Krista approve of her moving right in. Blake is surprised by how little Whitney has when she arrives with just a handful of items to fill up her room. Everything seems to be working out fine until trivial occurrences start sending warnings to Blake that Whitney might not be the innocent young woman she has made herself out to be.

It starts with minor annoyances, like eating all of Blake’s cereal and using up their shower supplies. The bad behavior slowly intensifies with a rash of fruit flies that accumulate in the kitchen area from an old bag of rotten apples she left in the cupboard. Blake continues to find little presents like this, and some are quite grisly. Before he can convince Krista that they need to evict her, Blake has some of his work shirts turn up with lipstick on the collar --- the same brand and shade that Whitney uses. Krista decides to temporarily move in with some friends while Blake continues his battle with Whitney, who fully understands the rights of renters in NYC and that evicting her will not be such an easy task.

The death of their goldfish is the final straw and forces Blake to launch his own investigation into Whitney’s past, starting in her family’s New Jersey hometown. What he finds there will shock him to the core and make him realize that Whitney is indeed someone to fear and not to be trifled with. McFadden is always a smart plotter, but this may be her finest story to date.

THE TENANT has it all. At one point, I felt that the storyline featuring the potentially psychopathic tenant might be getting a bit one-note --- even though she made the Glenn Close character from Fatal Attraction look like a girl scout. That all changed when McFadden pulled out a brilliant twist that I did not see coming. With my head spinning, I grinned and eagerly devoured the remainder of the book in a single sitting. I also enjoyed her showing a male POV for most of the novel, which, to my knowledge, she has not done previously. This outstanding psychological thriller is sure to please her countless fans.