Minette Walters and thrillers

I don't normally read thrillers, though it's getting less and less accurate for me to say that. I read Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendell and a few others I've tried in the past. I read a bunch of Archer Mayers, mostly because one of them took place at my alma mater, but I quit when the absurdity of so much crime taking place in the small town of Brattelboro, VT (which I've visited) outweighed any pleasure I got from the books. I absolutely love Stella Rimington's three books about MI-5. But generally I stay away.
It's the writing that kills me. Most thrillers are terribly written and I've always been less of a plot-driven reader and more of a hyper-sensitive critic of the finely-turned phrase. The writing's got to be good.
That said, there is a time when my mind turns to the dark and easy-to-ingest, and that's why I'm so pleased to find good writers who also make me turn the page in anticipation of the big pay-off of whodunit (or whydonit or, occasionally, howdonit). I've been circling around Minnette Walters for a few years--since my bookstore days really, but I never committed until this summer and now I've read two.
I started with Acid Row (by chance) and immediately had grave misgivings because it turned out to be about pedophiles and I feared the story would just become bogged down in the easy disgust we all feel for this type of person. But it was the characters that finally grabbed me and dragged me in. They were all interesting and seemingly no real "good guy." When I finally found a character to like, Walters took her time exposing his basic goodness. The story ripped right along and, being new to her writing, I really didn't know if everything was going to turn out as it should.
More recently I read The Dark Room which I liked a little less because the ending was a bit disappointing, but I don't regret the dark and creepy ride Walters took me on. Make no mistake, these books are creepy. I did have a lot of bad dreams due to reading right before bed, but there was nothing cheap and graphic about the writing. I think "foreboding" is the right word to describe it. She doesn't really take the easy way out by just grossing us out and then having a "The butler did it ending." Just about everyone is flawed or mistaken at least occasionally which doesn't feel forced. And since there's no clear-cut hero, the story feels a bit more like real life (Now that's kind of creepy).
I'm probably done with this kind of reading for awhile as I need some bright and sunny stuff to stave off a New England winter, but I know there's a backlog of Minnette Walters for me at the library and there IS a newish Rendell I haven't gotten to and a new Ian Rankin, so maybe I'm lying about the whole "I don't read thrillers" bit.