Tessa Wegert is the author of the Shana Merchant novels, which include Death in the Family, The Dead Season, Dead Wind, and The Kind to Kill. A former freelance journalist and digital media strategist, Wegert’s work has appeared in Forbes, The Huffington Post, Adweek, and The Economist. She grew up in Quebec and now lives with her husband and children in Connecticut.
[My Book, The Movie: The Dead Season; The Page 69 Test: The Dead Season; Q&A with Tessa Wegert; The Page 69 Test: Dead Wind; Writers Read: Tessa Wegert (April 2022); Writers Read: Tessa Wegert (December 2022)]
At CrimeReads Wegert tagged four novels that embrace "unusual settings that are loaded with both atmosphere and crime fiction potential," including:
Wonderland by Jennifer HillierRead about another entry on the list.
Spooky settings make great foundations for thrillers, but there’s something especially unsettling about a terrifying story that plays out somewhere typicallyassociated with good clean fun. In Wonderland, Jennifer Hiller capitalizes on such positive associations by transforming an amusement park into a killing ground.
Hillier does a beautiful job of juxtaposing the park’s carnival atmosphere with its rumored sordid past, lulling readers into a false sense of comfort only to shock them with dead bodies, wax clowns, and subterranean tombs. After reading this tense and surprising thriller, you’ll never look at theme park season the same way again.
--Marshal Zeringue