The Shadows

Starred review from April 6, 2020
The pseudonymous North follows up his sensational debut, 2019’s The Whisper Man, with another terrifying spine-tingler set in Featherbank, England. When Paul Adams was 15, his school playground was the scene of the murder of one of his friends. The alleged killer, teenager Charlie Crabtree, was another friend of Paul. Charlie disappeared and was never seen again. After going away to college, Paul doesn’t return to Featherbank until, as a 40-year-old English teacher, he decides he must come home to tend to his dying mother. To his dismay, history appears to be repeating itself with a series of copycat killings of teenage boys. Det. Amanda Beck, from the previous novel, investigates as the bodies pile up and suspects accumulate. Ghosts (real and imagined) continue to haunt Paul, whose senile mother fears something strange is in the house. The complex plot shifts smoothly between past and present with numerous unexpected twists. An overwhelming atmosphere of doom and disaster hovers over the perennial darkness of the nearby woods. This heart-pounding page-turner is impossible to put down. Agent: Sandra Sawicka, Marjacq (U.K.).

May 1, 2020
A copycat killing of a teenager 25 years after the original murder reopens old wounds in a small British town. You hear a lot about mean girls, but in North's follow-up to The Whisper Man (2019), it's the boys who are a bunch of creeps. Back in his school days, 14-year-old Paul Adams and his best friend, James--a couple of losers--fell in with a small, nasty crowd led by a charismatic, seemingly psychic, and possibly homicidal weirdo named Charlie Crabtree. Charlie trained his group in the keeping of dream diaries and the techniques of lucid dreaming, and ultimately one of the friends ended up dead. The local scary woods, known as The Shadows, and a wild pattern of bloody handprints, known as Red Hands, were involved. As soon as he possibly could, Paul packed up for college and never went back, not even once. When he is forced by his elderly mother's fall to return to Gritten Park 25 year later, there is only one consolation--he reconnects with Jenny, the bookish girl with whom he bonded over a shared love of Stephen King. (Their conversation about the King oeuvre is one of the most charming parts of the book.) Meanwhile, on a parallel track, Detective Amanda Beck is investigating the recent murder of a teenage boy in the town of Featherbank. On message boards used by those close to the incident, someone with the handle CC666 claims to have been present at the original Red Hands murder so long ago. No one has seen Charlie Crabtree in 25 years...could this be him? The complicated backstory and new characters introduced late in the game to explain the increasingly confusing facts are not great. But the recourse to the ol' "and then I woke up" tactic to pull one over on the reader is worse. Despite several interesting characters, the suspense plot lacks an engaging emotional core.

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June 1, 2020

Twenty-five years ago, near the English village of Featherbank, which served as the setting of North's debut, The Whisper Man, there were four boys who weren't really close. But three were outcasts at school and the fourth, Paul, tagged along to protect his friend James, who was in the thrall of the group's leader, Charlie Crabtree. Charlie came up with an idea: they would all keep dream diaries, using them to make their dreams converge; then they could control events in the waking world and avenge themselves on their tormentors. Eventually, three went into a dark woods, the Shadows. Only one came out; a mutilated corpse was left behind. The one who came out went to prison, but Charlie Crabtree disappeared, never to be heard from again. Now Paul has come home--his mother's dying, he hasn't seen her in 25 years--and bad things start up again. There's a copycat killing in the woods. Someone follows it on the Dark Net. "Red hands everywhere," his mother mutters. Paul searches for answers. Before this twisty story ends, there are many surprises, including who's been killed and who killed them. VERDICT The conclusion wraps it up too tidily, but overall, this is a successful, creepy thriller. If you like Stephen King, you'll probably like North's new thriller, too.--David Keymer, Cleveland

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2020
DI Amanda Beck, still recovering from the trauma recounted in The Whisper Man (2019), is called in when another horrendous event occurs in the ill-fated small town of Featherbank. She believes it to be patterned after a crime 25 years ago in which two teenagers murdered a fellow schoolmate in a vicious stabbing. One of the two was captured, but the other, Charlie Crabtree, seemed to vanish into thin air. Charlie was a malicious misfit who claimed to have supernatural powers heightened by the practice of lucid dreaming and has since developed an online cult following. The woods surrounding the town are known locally as the Shadows, rumored to be inhabited by the ghost of a suicide victim called Red Hands, which serves to heighten speculation. Both crime scenes were riddled with bloody handprints. Paul Adams has returned to the town for the first time since the Whisper Man case to see to his aged mother's affairs. The murderers and the victim were his friends. He expects to be uncomfortable but is totally unprepared for the terror that ensues. The reader can expect to be electrified by the author's total mastery of misdirection. This second stunning thriller firmly establishes North as a rapturous teller of tales.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)