Saskia Noort, The Dinner Club

After Karen moved from Amsterdam into the village with her husband, Michel, and their two daughters, it took her a while to make friends. But finally she found Hanneke, and through her three other women, and the five of them became fast friends. They dubbed themselves "The Dinner Club" and became a mutual support group—they drank and ate and vacationed together, watched one another's kids. Their husbands did business together. But when the book opens, one of their houses is on fire. Someone dies. And the tragedy, together with another which follows shortly afterward, lays bare various truths, among them that the relationships among the members of the club are more superficial than Karen had supposed. Nor were the members' five marriages as happy as she had supposed.

Saskia Noort's The Dinner Club follows the downward trajectory of the club's relationships. As things disintegrate, Karen comes increasingly to suspect that the fire was fueled by something more than middle-aged angst and alcohol. The book is filled with a quiet menace, and Noort does a great job of keeping us guessing, our suspicions alighting now on one character, now another. After this slow, steady build-up of tension, the book's conclusion, an explosion of violence, is jarring. It doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the book. The conclusion also left me thinking I might have to re-read some chapters to figure out what, precisely, was the truth behind the complex of relationships among the dinner club members and their husbands.

The Dinner Club, which was originally published in Dutch in 2004, has been a bestseller in the Netherlands, and film rights to the book have been sold. It would, I think, translate well to the screen.