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EAN: 9780552158848
Format: Paperback
Published: 2 Jan 2010
Other Editions:
Hardback, ebook
Synopsis
Twelve-year-old Steven Lamb digs holes on Exmoor, hoping to find a body. Every day after school, while his classmates swap football stickers, Steven goes digging to lay to rest the ghost of the uncle he never knew, who disappeared aged eleven and is assumed to have fallen victim to the notorious serial killer Arnold Avery.
Only Steven’s Nan is not convinced her son is dead. She still waits for him to come home, standing bitter guard at the front window while her family fragments around her. Steven is determined to heal the widening cracks between them before it’s too late. And if that means presenting his grandmother with the bones of her murdered son, he’ll do it.
So the boy takes the next logical step, carefully crafting a letter to Arnold Avery in prison. And there begins a dangerous cat-and-mouse game between a desperate child and a bored serial killer . . .
What the critics say
With this extraordinarily powerful and provocative debut, Belinda Bauer has shifted the boundaries of what makes a truly gripping, terrifying thriller. Imagine Thomas Harris crossed with Kate Atkinson and you still won’t be close...Right from the start you know you are reading something both new and with real guts...will leave you breathless.
- Henry Sutton, Daily Mirror
This astonishingly assured debut... for once lives up to the hype… genuinely chilling… a psychological tour-de-force about the cruelty of hope and, ultimately, the triumph of innocence
- Laura Wilson, Guardian
An excellent first novel, with a highly original plot and convincingly clammy atmosphere . . . Belinda Bauer paces the rising tension with great skill and a confidence rarely exhibited by first-timers. She’s a real find
- The Times
[Bauer's] portrait of the psychopath chills the blood. The reader is fully gripped… Bauer’s first novel shows an extraordinary power of imagination and, vital in crime fiction, the ability to create fear and empathy in the reader
- Jane Jakeman, Independent
In this atmospheric debut, Bauer ably paints a convincingly chilling portrait of a child killer, but it is her moving portrayal of a lonely, bullied child with a comfortless life that singles her out as an accomplished writer
- Carla McKay, Daily Mail