This title popped up on my audible app and I was immediately intrigued. It just goes to show what a good title and cover can do. It also helped that the book was endorsed by Stephen King apparently.
The blurb:
In 1986, Eddie and his friend are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy little English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for each other as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing will ever be the same.
In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he's put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out his other friends got the same messages, they think it could be a prank...until one of them turns up dead. That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.
Expertly alternating between flashbacks and the present day, The Chalk Man is the very best kind of suspense novel, one where every character is wonderfully fleshed out and compelling, where every mystery has a satisfying payoff, and where the twists will shock even the savviest listener.
In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he's put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out his other friends got the same messages, they think it could be a prank...until one of them turns up dead. That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.
Expertly alternating between flashbacks and the present day, The Chalk Man is the very best kind of suspense novel, one where every character is wonderfully fleshed out and compelling, where every mystery has a satisfying payoff, and where the twists will shock even the savviest listener.
Opening Sentence: The girl’s head rested on a small pile of orange-and-brown leaves.
Days to read: 11 (Audible)
After being intrigued by the cover and title, the blurb well and truly sucked me in. This is a debut novel but you would not know it. Having said that the blurb highlights how Tudor expertly alternates between flashbacks and the present day – I would not necessarily agree with this.
For the first third of the novel at least, the strength of the story in the flashbacks is far superior to the lack of action in the present day. Tudor captures the language, the feel and the wonderment of a child hood which, being a similar age, I could really enjoy and be nostalgic with. The banter between the gang of five children is great as are their fears and excitement. They might start off as caricatures as Tudor rushes a little to get their traits across rather than showing us their personalities naturally, but overall, despite the impending sense of doom which hangs over the gang, I couldn’t help but enjoy their escapades with a smile on my lips.
Eddie the POV character, is the most level headed of the five and through him we experience his anxieties and insecurities of being a teenager and his little secret of stealing objects. I especially liked the group dynamic. Not everyone gets on with each other but there is an acceptance that their group is their group and they would stick up for each other regardless. Their reactions to events are consistent with their characters and the supporting characters are both mysterious and likeable.
The present day narrative is slow to begin with and the characters we see are more cynical, jaded and generally not as fun. There is nothing wrong with this realistic approach, it is just that Eddie has disappointedly drifted through his life and not amounted to much. However, when a certain event occurs, the tension is really ratchetted up a notch. From then the pace of the narrative increases and there are twists and turns galore. Every time you think you have the plot figured out, Tudor pulls the rug out from under your feet. In the final third, when the prose switched between the two time periods I generally groaned as I wanted the plot to continue, so I guess I don’t entirely disagree with the blurb.
Overall then, the Chalk man is an accomplished and impressive debut. The ending was more than satisfactory with a great twist I never saw coming. I will not hesitate to purchase the next book from Tudor.
My rating: 8.7
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