On a sweltering day in 1998, 11 year old Jack, his younger sisters, Joy, and toddler, Merry, leave their broken down car to see what is keeping their pregnant mother, who had set out to phone for help.

And I’m still an advocate of genre fiction having a place in the Man Booker and other literary awards… provided that it’s really exemplary genre fiction. Jack starts to think more about his mother’s death, and he is filled with rage at the fact that his mother’s murderer was never caught. My first Belinda Bauer kept me guessing and provided SNAPS - CRACKLES - and a - POP of a fine ending! I was considering trying this anyway, but so much of this sounds like dealbreaker stuff to me and I just cannot waste my time on endless exclamation points right now.There are just so many plot holes (a very unique and distinctive knife is used to commit a murder and the police never think to look into the sale of that knife? Bauer had been, despite initial misgivings, thoroughly assimilated into the crime-writing community.

New characters (Catherine and Adam) seem at first to be irrelevant to the main story and to run parallel, but Bauer skilfully weaves their stories together and we gradually begin to guess how they are connected. I couldn’t help but fall in love with his character and couldn’t help but root for him and hope that he somehow finds closure with his mom’s murder.He is a damaged, brave boy nearing adulthood, a time that holds a fascination for Bauer, which she attributes to Stephen King. Bearing more than a passing resemblance to the Marie Wilks murder, Eileen Bright breaks down on the hard shoulder of a west-country motorway, leaves her young children in the car, and heads off to find an emergency telephone. This has a straightforward story line, good sound characters, and a couple of surprising reveals along the way. And I can’t end this review without commenting again on this book’s inclusion on the Man Booker longlist, which in itself caused quite a stir, raising the age-old question of whether genre fiction belongs in a literary prize. At the heart of it all is a family, drowning in misery and unrelenting pain, their future crushed by the inhuman act that deprives them of a loving mother and wife.