Spoilers!
The scariest thing about serial killers — sociopaths — is that they are highly adept at hiding in plain sight. Blending in. Being part of the community. Having a family. Which is why that community, that family, is typically incredulous when the serial killer is outed. Maybe with the ability of now knowing, they can start seeing the past red flags, but that’s only with the assistance of informed hindsight. Clémence Michallon’s debut book, 2023’s The Quiet Tenant, explores this chilling dynamic in the best page-turner I’ve read so far this year.
A man has kidnapped a woman. He’s kept her in a shed, seemingly in the backyard of his house, for five years. He exerts complete control over her, or at least, thinks he does. To paraphrase and reapply a Virginia Woolf quote, you can quite literally put chains upon me, but there is no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind. It is with this mind the woman is carefully collecting rules to stay alive, to survive one more day, and to eventually, escape him. What’s brilliant about the way Michallon structures her book is that these chapters with the kidnapped woman — cleverly, variously titled “the woman in the shed”; “woman in transit”; “the woman in the house” — are written in second-person point-of-view. “Inside, he taught you the new rules of the world.” Michallon is putting us, as readers, in the shoes of this woman through every aching moment with a serial killer and rapist. From the little moments, where the woman doesn’t want to sleep in the bed once the man moves her inside his new home because she’s used to the wooden floor of the shed to the bigger moments where the man nearly suffocates her to death. It makes for an claustrophobic, harrowing read. It engenders empathy even more than what would exist as a baseline.
The reason the man moves her to his new home is because his wife died of cancer and his in-laws are kicking him out (they rightly suspected that something was off about him and never liked him) of their home. He, being the affable, beloved man-about-town, is given the local, long-elected judge’s rented home. This man, who we come to know as Aiden, is so confident and brash in his ability to control the kidnapped woman that he brings her into this home with his 13-year-old daughter. He tells the daughter he’s subletting the room to a friend of a friend of a friend. He parades the woman in town in front of the judge. He even allows the town, who is sad on him and his family’s behalf that they rally to support him, to throw a Christmas party at this house with the kidnapped woman inside. It’s incredible and unnerving as hell.
Worse still is that Aiden, again, walking through town as the most-liked man, has set his predator eyes upon Emily, the owner of a local restaurant. She’s reeling from the grief of losing both her parents recently and is rather adrift in the world. She’s a prime target, in other words, for a serial killer. Where she thinks he’s cozying up to her and forming a relationship, he’s actually planting the seeds to make her his 10th victim.
What I love about the woman is that she slowly, but surely, regains her mettle and her mental prowess, and eventually, even her physical prowess, to hold on to who she is, who she was, and who she will be again after him. The Achilles heel of a serial killer is the aforementioned arrogance; it makes them messy and slip up. It’s the cliche that they almost want to get caught, for someone to stop them. Aiden thinks he has the woman so locked down mentally, that she won’t snoop around and plot an escape. But she does just that, and soon, she’s planning her escape to stop him not just for herself, not just for his daughter, not just for the righteous cause of all the women killed before her and after her capture, but also to protect Emily, who she learns is his current target.
In an appropriately intense, hand-clenching climax, Michallon has the woman escape from the house with the daughter, only for Aiden to chase after them. He nearly catches up to the woman, but she makes it to the local police department. Now, I was still very worried. After all, he’s the beloved community man! The grieving widower! The doting father! Fortunately, in the best chapter in the entire book, owing to its power, the woman says her name, May Mitchell, to the police. She is May Mitchell. In a name, is power. In a name, is who she was and will be again. In her name, his power over her is gone. I have goosebumps even thinking about it again! From that comes Aiden’s arrest and investigation into his serial killer ways.
Michallon’s book is an impressive debut, doubly so since, as she said in the Acknowledgements, she wrote it in her second language (English, as she’s French). I share her fascination with serial killers, and she constructed the perfect serial killer story to burrow her way under my skin. Aiden was spellbinding in his terrifying ability to navigate the world where he was a tyrant toward May, while also being this caring father (although if you read through the lines, he controlled his daughter similarly to how he controlled May) and community man on the surface. And as a quasi-“final girl,” May was absolutely someone you were rooting for to escape and succeed. Not even so much to shoot and kill Aiden. Just to get away. To save herself. To save Emily. To out him. That’s what you really want: the serial killer to be outed in his chosen community where he acts the chameleon.
I look forward for what Michallon does next!
Milam's Musings 