It's been a while since I read let alone reviewed a paperback thriller and this despite wanting to pick this particular book up for a while. I've become a fan of C.J.Tudor since she started writing novels. Having read her previous three masterpieces The Chalk Man (currently being made into a BBC TV series apparently), The Taking Of Annie Thorne and The Other People I expected an equally good story in this tome and I was not to be disappointed.
Oddly this book caught my attention in WHSmith's as I waled past their "Richard & Judy Book Club section and just picked it up like a shot. And at half price I might add! This is a special edition with extras from the former TV hosts who both write short introductions and provide questions for Book Club members to discuss at the end plus a short interview with the author.
For once I was grateful for an introduction as Judy made it clear that "Jack" our main character was in fact a woman. Having just watched an old episode of Emmerdale where their Jack is in prison I'm sure I would have assumed Jack was a bloke at least for the first few pages.
Of course our maverick vicar isn't a bloke and is in fact a woman and single parent as well. Her daughter Flo will turn out to be very central to the mystery as it develops. Like all her novels there's a supernatural element element, the burning girls, little dolls made by some villagers to commemorate religious persecution some five hundred years past.
There's a mysterious death of her predecessor, apparitions for both our Jack and her daughter, some bullies, a weirdo, a fugitive and more in this continually twisting tale of lies, deceit, murder and lots of disappearances in the recent past. All this keeps the reader thinking right to the end as the tale weaved by it's author reaches a climax no one will have seen coming.
This novel is also due to made into a TV series.
Rating: 5 Stars (Highly Recommended)
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