Snap

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.).

As a mystery, SNAP stretches credulity. But Andrew Wincott's narration is steadying, even as the story shifts under foot. Jack Bright, who is only 14, has been left to raise his siblings as best he can--through petty theft--after his mother's murder. In the midst of a bill-paying burglary, Jack discovers a possible clue to that murder. He has to decide whether to bring the law down on himself in order to get justice. Wincott's take on Jack is dead on, as is his rendering of Jack's two younger sisters. Wincott needs to interest us in these children, given the hapless assortment of adults surrounding them--all equally well rendered but by no means as sympathetic. K.W. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine