Rock Paper Scissors
Alice Feeney, 2021
Mystery, thriller & crime Contemporary fiction
A marriage-saving weekend in the Scottish Highlands becomes a test of memory, trust and weather as a husband and wife discover how little they know each other. A cold, wind-bitten weekend of unease, with lyrical passages about weather and memory and a satirical edge to the marriage.
Feels like unease, curiosity and tenderness. About memory and morality.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy domestic suspense where a marriage is picked apart through memory and bad weather. The Scottish Highlands setting is vividly harsh, but the slow-burn withholding between the couple can make the middle feel deliberately murky.
Why read it
Pick it up for a tense, weather-soaked story about memory and trust in a marriage, and for the pleasure of piecing together what the couple won't say.
A page from the book
A marriage held together by a wedding ring and a storm outside.
Farther inland, a forest engulfs us. Ancient pine trees, dusted with snow, and taller than our house, are being bent out of shape by the storm as though they are matchsticks. The wind wails like a ghost outside the car, constantly trying to blow us off course, and when we slide a little on the icy road, I grip the steering wheel so tight that the bones in my fingers seem to protrude through my skin. I notice my wedding ring. A solid reminder that we are still together, despite all the reasons we should perhaps be apart. Alice Feeney.Alice Feeney is a former BBC journalist; Rock Paper Scissors was a New York Times bestseller.
Books that feel like this
More by Alice Feeney
Sometimes I Lie
Alice Feeney, 2017
A narrator who cannot be trusted picks apart memory, marriage and the stories we tell ourselves, in a thriller built on what is heard and what is said.
Daisy Darker
Alice Feeney, 2022
A darkly funny family mystery about inheritance, old grudges, and a narrator who has already died more than once.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Rock Paper Scissors for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy domestic suspense where a marriage is picked apart through memory and bad weather. The Scottish Highlands setting is vividly harsh, but the slow-burn withholding between the couple can make the middle feel deliberately murky.
- What is Rock Paper Scissors like?
- A cold, wind-bitten weekend of unease, with lyrical passages about weather and memory and a satirical edge to the marriage. Feels like unease, curiosity and tenderness. About memory and morality.
- What should I read after Rock Paper Scissors?
- If you liked Rock Paper Scissors, try The Girl on the Train (Paula Hawkins), Smiley's People (John le Carré) and Lock Every Door (Riley Sager).
A taste of the feed
A home you can't stop looking at, even though it hurts.
I lived at number twenty-three Blenheim Road for five years, blissfully happy and utterly wretched. I can’t look at it now. That was my first home. Not my parents’ place, not a flatshare with other students, my first home. I can’t bear to look at it. Well, I can, I do, I want to, I don’t want to, I try not to. Every day I tell myself not to look, and every day I look. I can’t help myself, even though there is nothing I want to see there, even though anything I do see will hurt me.
The Girl on the Train · Paula Hawkins
The first rule of retirement, as preached by the people who never retire.
You remember the first rule of retirement, George? No moonlighting, no fooling with loose ends, no private enterprise, ever. You remember who preaches this rule, at Sarratt, in the corridors? George Smiley did. Quote, “When it’s over, it’s over. Pull down the shutters, go home,” unquote. We’re over, George. We’ve got no license. They don’t want us anymore.
Smiley's People · John le Carré
The part of poverty that people who haven't lived it miss.
Because here’s the thing about being poor—most people don’t understand it unless they’ve been there themselves. They don’t know what a fragile balancing act it is to stay afloat and that if, God forbid, you momentarily slip underwater, how hard it is to resurface.
Lock Every Door · Riley Sager
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