A teenage boy hunts for his mother’s killer in this Man Booker Prize-longlisted novel by “the true heir to the great Ruth Rendell” (Mail on Sunday, UK). Just before Jack’s mother disappeared up the road to get help, she put the eleven-year-old boy in charge of his two sister. As they wait for her on the shoulder of the road in their stifling, broken-down car, the three children bicker, whine … the three children bicker, whine and play I-Spy. But their mother never comes back. And after that long, hot summer’s day, nothing will ever be the same again.
At fifteen-years-old, Jack is still in charge–supporting his sisters any way he can while evading social services. Meanwhile, a young woman across town wakes to find a knife beside her bed, and a note reading I could of killed you. The police are tracking a mysterious burglar they call Goldilocks, for his habit of sleeping in the beds of the houses he robs. But the woman doesn’t see the point of involving the police. And Jack, very suddenly, may be on the verge of finding out who killed his mother.
The Gold Dagger Award-winning author of Blacklands reaffirms her reputation for masterful, twisty crime fiction with this “unnerving suspense novel” (Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times).
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What an opening scene! It has everything: vulnerability, heart, tension, fear…. From then, I HAD to keep reading.
Being somewhere between detective novel and psychological thriller, this book is a different slant on both, and I really enjoy it when genres get looked at from a new angle. There were moments of depth, moments of laughter, all handled with ease, flair and a very readable writing style.
The characters are a little caricature (the police, to be honest. The others are written with far more care and understanding) but I enjoyed them. The plot is a stretch to believe but if I wanted realism I’d read a true crime book. I don’t mind any of those things, and lost myself in a page-turner of a book that dragged me along behind it as it raced on at full pelt.
I don’t think it lived up to the chilling, heart-breaking promise of its early pages, and the initial build up of tension, but I’d still recommend it as a great read.
Addictive, gripping, and heartbreaking at times. Only picked it up because I’d heard it was set in the town I grew up in, but I absolutely loved it.
At the start, I found myself wondering why this book has been so highly praised by well-known writers and has even had a Booker nomination. By the end, I still felt the praise was a tad overdone as, to my mind, there are flaws but I was glad I read to the end. My reservations were that the plot was sometimes implausible and the policemen were portrayed in a rather clichéd manner with strong overtones of Inspector Clouseau. The characters of Jack, the boy who was left to cope when his mother went to fetch help on the motorway and never came back, his sisters, and friends were much more engaging and convincing. The motivation of the killer was hardly explored. On the plus side, I liked the dark humour that raised the story above the average, so despite all my reservations, I enjoyed the book and would recommend giving it a try.
Probably not my favourite of hers but whatever she writes is always interesting…
Such a heart clenching story, I had to many feelings through out this book. I felt so sorry for Jack and how his life turned out but the ending was just what I hoped for. This was a truly gripping and an amazing story
This had a truly original feel to it – gritty, slightly offbeat, with a West Country setting I can deeply relate to.
3.5 stars rounded up for an intricately plotted murder mystery. The first half of the book moved slowly while the author set up the plot and developed the characters. The book opens with a very pregnant mother with 3 children on a road in England. The car breaks down and the mother goes for a telephone. It is August, 1998 and she doesn’t have a cell(mobile) phone. She tells her children that she’ll be back. She doesn’t come back and the 3 children go to find help. A policeman comes to their assistance. He takes them home to their dad. More than a week later her body is found. She has been murdered.
Their dad spirals into depression and leaves the children. Jack doesn’t want his sisters to be taken in to care and decides to take care of them by burglarizing vacant homes and selling stolen items to a friend.
It is now 3 years later and Jack, while burglarizing a house he thought was vacant, discovers a knife exactly like the one used to murder his mother. This starts a chain of events that leads to discovery of the murderer.
Pros: The plot was intricate and the clues slowly lead the police, with Jack’s help, to the murderer. The language describing the places and characters was very vivid.
Cons: The first half moved very slowly.
This book was longlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2018, so I’m probably in the minority here.
Two quotes:
“Jack Bright’s eyes were narrow as a smoker’s and pale grey, as if all the colour had been cried out of them. They were divided by a single deep frown line that belonged to a man in his fifties with the cares of the world on his shoulders.”
Detective Chief Inspector Marvel thinking about the murder: “Investigating a murder was like doing a jigsaw puzzle in the dark. The constant fingertip-feeling and testing and turning. The picking up and the putting down and the picking up again.”
Thank You GRF Theresa who gave me this book when I visited England in 2018.
SNAP is an intriguing book – and different. Unlike many police procedural novelists, Bauer has an amazing ability to create characters about whom the reader really cares.
Fourteen-year-old burglar, Jack, is full of rage, and makes questionable choices in his bid to provide for his two little sisters. But Bauer handles this uncomfortable subject matter with elegance and empathy.
As Jack’s quest to reveal the truth about his mother’s murderer intensifies, danger threatens the three children and the reader is left desperate to find out what happens to them.
It’s a wonderful plot with amazing twists and turns, tension and humour – and a very satisfying ending.
original Story!
I was immediately pulled into this story and instantly felt sorry for the children. I felt the characters were well-written, some even comical in their actions, but I liked them enough to want to keep going. Although the story had a good ending, I wish that more had been clarified in regards to motive once the pieces come together on what happened. Other than that, I thought SNAP was very good and I would definitely read other books by this author
A little slow. Would have expected more of a plot twist for a thriller.
Suspenseful! This is the first book by Belinda Bauer I’ve read — and it grabbed me from page one. When a nuclear family’s life snaps in one horrible afternoon, one eventually discovers all the other lives that have gone awry to bring about this tragedy. Very suspenseful and the prose is a dream.
A different kind of police procedural, with a bit of tragedy mixed with some funny characters. It really kept my interest and was very original!
Clever.
Love Belinda Bauer!!!
Jack and his 2 sisters lose their pregnant mother to a killer. The last time they saw her, she left them in their broken down car and went to find a phone. She was never seen again. Nothing will ever be the same again … for any of them.
Three years later Jack is in charge. Still living in their house, it’s just the three of them. Their father has left and has never returned. Jack turns to robbing houses to make money enough to pay the few bills and keep food in the house. There is no such thing as school … they are essentially living off the grid.
Catherine While wakes only to find a note saying “I could have killed you” weighted down by a knife she’s never seen before. She’s in her third trimester of pregnancy and her husband is out of town. Should she call him … call the police? She hides the knife and decides to do nothing.
Jack, his sisters, Catherine, her husband, Adam, and the police …. all come to a crossroads. There are mistakes made, and several of them have secrets …. secrets that all have consequences should they be brought to light.
This is such an imaginative story, well-written, by a well known author. The characters are memorable and Jack, especially, will stay with you for a long, long time. A couple of characters demand to be mentioned … one is the knife-maker, the other is the detective’s mother. There is so much in the action-packed book, I didn’t want to put it down for any reason. The ending was quite explosive, and while exciting, still a tad disappointing.
Many thanks to the author / Grove Atlantic / Netgalley / Edelweiss for the advanced digital copy of this riveting novel. Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.
This novel by Belinda Bauer reminds me of why I started reading thrillers just about three years ago. She doesn’t just write great thrillers, she writes beautiful novels with characters that you care about, well defined, flawed, unique, moving. There seem to be so many thrillers written where the only interesting thing about them is the “thrill” itself, the random act, the brutal violence, the up and down ride of the story, and that fine, it can be great entertainment. Ms. Bauer however is a master at the craft of writing, she is a brilliant novelist. I still cannot forget reading “Rubbernecker” and thinking, wow, I’ve been missing out on a genre where there are some incredible writers. I discovered some fantastic writers; Ms. Bauer, Ruth Ware, Lisa Jewell, Simone St. James, Claire Macintosh, and there are others that I’m forgetting right now. It is just so fantastic to read a thriller that also moves me in other ways, this is one of those. Sorry, I’m ranting.
As you know from the blurb for the book, three young children are left alone on the side of the road way while their mother goes to find gas, or help, she gets neither, she is never coming back. It was great storytelling letting us know how the three of them survived. Jack the eldest felt the burden of taking care of Merry and and having to resort to breaking and entering houses to feed his sisters. He steal money, food, etc and then spends the night sleeping in their homes, he has researched all of this carefully. What a brilliant young man. How three young children absent from school would go unnoticed remains a mystery. Their father left them after he couldn’t function after the loss of his wife. So the children have suffered two losses. Jack is a character that will make you want to just hug him and take care of him after all that he’s been through! There is so much about this young man you are going to love to get to know! Each of these characters are unique and we get to know a lot about them, in particular Merry the youngest of the children who we watch grow up confused, lonely, in a house with no parents and a brother frequently gone.
Detectives Marvel and Reynolds are investigating the robberies in the area and eventually they get involved with helping Jack look for his mother’s killer. Two such opposite characters –one, Marvel, a detective who was moved down to this small town after apparently something went wrong with a murder case he was involved in. He starts to get excited with the idea of figuring out a murder again. This character while appearing rough around the edges and pushing the boundaries of local police laws has a really big heart. He not only wants to solve the mystery he really wants to help these kids. His partner Reynolds is obsessed with doing everything by the book, precisely, exactly. Its wonderful to watch the interplay between these two, so different, but they still trusted each other. Great partners!
So these were two storylines. There is a third which is introduced as the beginning. A young pregnant woman, Catherine, awakes to find a note with a knife stating “I could have killed you”. She has no idea where it came from and she makes a “snap” decision not to tell her husband about this which ends up almost costing her everything!
I hope I’ve interested you enough that you will run and get this book as soon as it’s published, it’s that good!
I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher through Edelweiss, thank you.