Snap

April 1, 2018

Bauer's (The Beautiful Dead) latest thriller to star DCI Marvel follows 11-year-old Jack, who is left in charge of his two younger siblings when their car breaks down along the highway and his pregnant mother goes in search of help. She never returns and is later found murdered. Three years later, their father, unable to cope with his wife's death, abandons the family. Now 14, Jack turns to crime to support Joy and Merry, meticulously keeping up outside appearances while their home is slowly consumed by newspapers and filth. Meanwhile, Marvel is on the lookout for the notorious Goldilocks, a burglar who eats the food and sleeps in the beds of the people he robs. One morning a pregnant Catherine White wakes up to find a jagged knife next to the note, "I could have killed you." What she can't know is that the pearl-handled weapon may have been used to kill Jack's mother. VERDICT This dark, twisty, and gripping tale is a must-read for fans of Nicci French and Sophie Hannah. Readers who know Bauer's work will recognize the crotchety Marvel, though it's not necessary to have read the author's other books to enjoy this one.--Nanci Milone Hill, M.G. Parker Memorial Lib., Dracut, MA

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 14, 2018
The gripping opening of this uneven thriller from Bauer (The Beautiful Dead) finds 11-year-old Jack Bright and his two younger sisters left in a car on a British motorway by their mother, Eileen, after a breakdown one summer day in 1998. Losing patience, Jack ventures out of the car in search of his mother only to find a phone booth with a receiver left dangling off the hook. When the police eventually rescue the three siblings, Jack learns that his mother’s call for assistance was recorded, but her words were cut off abruptly after she reported that someone in a car was pulling over to help her. Eileen is later found stabbed to death. In 2001, pregnant Catherine While scares off a stranger who breaks into her West Country home; later, she finds a knife next to a birthday card her mother sent her. The message in the card had been crossed out and replaced with the words “I could have killed you.” The plot lines predictably overlap, but in a way that feels contrived. Bauer fans will hope for a return to form next time. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Co. (U.K.).

May 1, 2018
The three children of a murdered woman hide in plain sight.Jack Bright, Bauer's (The Beautiful Dead, 2017, etc.) plucky main character, is only 14, but he's the sole support of what's left of his family. Three years ago, in 1998, Jack's mother, Eileen, left him and his two younger sisters in their broken-down car while she went in search of a roadside telephone. Her body was found several days later, and the children's father, after trying to cope, disappeared. Now, unbeknownst to social services and truancy officers, Jack and his sisters, Joy and Merry, still inhabit their clutter-bound family home. Jack and Merry maintain the exterior to put off authorities. Jack also maintains the family's fragile economy by burglarizing homes, stealing only healthy food and occasionally napping in a victim's bed. Thanks to the consistency of this M.O., the police call him the Goldilocks burglar, although they're not even close to identifying or nabbing him. The book's third-person perspective shifts among multiple characters, major and minor, but is always vividly real. Heavily pregnant Catherine, whose husband, Adam, is away on business, drives off an unseen home invader only to find an abalone-handled knife placed next to a scrawled note: "I could have killed you." A never entirely credible reluctance stops her from calling the police or telling Adam. Marvel, a senior detective exiled to "darkest Somerset" after a fall from grace at his London post, disdains the hunt for Goldilocks as much as he longs for a homicide case. Reynolds, a vain but deeply insecure detective, visits his aging mother often at her new home but ignores her concerns about the three seemingly feral children next door. Perspectives and offhand clues converge as Marvel finds that a rash of small-town burglaries just might lead to a career-salvaging murder investigation and to the cold case of Eileen Bright. All of the characters, though flawed human beings in varying degrees, are likable, which gets in the way of creating a convincing villain.This thriller, though gripping to the end, is a victim of its own niceness.

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Starred review from May 1, 2018
Bauer secures her place as a star in the British psychological-suspense firmament with this tightly written tale of Jack, a young boy who turns to crime after his mother's brutal murder. Jack and his two sisters, Joy and baby Merry, are left alone twice?first, when their mother's car breaks down on the M5 motorway and she leaves them to find help, and again, three years later, when their father abandons the children, unable to cope with his grief. At 11 years old, Jack is now the man of the house, left to steal items he can sell to a petty-crime ringleader for cash to support his younger sisters. They get by just under the radar, but Joy is mentally unstable, Merry is unschooled, and the whole house is buried under thousands of newspapers that Joy scours for mentions of the unsolved crime that ruined their lives. When Jack is convinced he's found the weapon used to murder his mother in a home he's burgling, his already unraveling life descends further into chaos. Bauer's characters (including DCI John Marvel, who has appeared in some of her previous novels) are richly drawn and her plotting is impeccable. Even the most bizarre circumstances and red herrings make perfect sense. Readers who miss Ruth Rendell are sure to become fast Bauer fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)