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I have just finished a domestic suspense book that, unbeknownst to me from reading the blurb, turned out to be set firmly during the early days of the pandemic in NYC: The Darkness of Others, by Cate Holahan.
This was an example of how not to write about the pandemic. While I wouldn't call it exploitation, covid was mostly a pointless distraction, only connected to one element of the plot (a restaurant failure, that, while an important element, could have happened without covid). There seemed to be endless references to face masks, social distancing, and other precautions. It felt as if the author had written a first draft of a standard domestic thriller, then decided to shoehorn the pandemic into the story. Really weird.
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