In 1986, the narrator Eddie Adams is 12 years old, building dens, riding bikes and communicating in a secret code of chalk figures with his friends Fat Gav, Metal Mickey, Hoppo and Nicky. While it’s not hard to guess the part Holly plays in the story, this engrossing psych-thriller-cum-courtroom-drama makes some pertinent observations about sex, power and entitlement, and makes for a particularly timely read in the wake of the #MeToo movement.ĬJ Tudor’s assured debut novel, The Chalk Man (Michael Joseph, £12.99), is a timeslip set in a market town on the south coast of England. A second storyline is set in the 1990s, featuring Holly, who studied at Oxford at the same time as Sophie, James and future prime minister Tom. The narrative baton passes between Kate, James and his adoring wife, Sophie. James has been chummy with the prime minister since Eton and belonged to a Bullingdon-type club at Oxford where drunken, drug-fuelled toffs behaved badly at parties he is handsome, charismatic and a family man. Barrister Kate Woodcroft is tasked with prosecuting junior Home Office minister James Whitehouse for raping a young researcher with whom he has recently had an affair.

There’s nothing wild or windswept about Sarah Vaughan’s debut crime novel, Anatomy of a Scandal (Simon & Schuster, £12.99), but its glossy, privileged London setting abounds with human predators. Given the subject matter, Denfeld’s lyrical writing can, on occasion, be discomforting, but the sense of physical and psychological isolation is palpable in this moving exploration of loss, hope and human resilience.

Her coping mechanism is to reinvent herself as “the snow girl”, putting herself into a fairytale to deal with the trauma of being wrenched from her family by a predatory stranger she knows only as “B”. The narrative alternates between Naomi’s search and Madison’s experience of being locked in the cave-like cellar of a remote cabin.

Single-minded Naomi – herself once a missing child, now with only vague memories to help her solve the mystery of her origins – is determined to find Madison, come what may. Naomi, the eponymous investigator, is asked to track down eight-year-old Madison Culver, who disappeared three years earlier during a trip to cut down a Christmas tree and is generally assumed to have frozen to death.

Set in the snowy mountain forests of Oregon, The Child Finder (W&N, £12.99) is the second novel from bestselling American author Rene Denfeld.

The chalk man novel