All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker (Orion, £20)
Set in a small town in Missouri, the British author’s novel more than lives up to the promise of its award-winning predecessor, We Begin at the End. Outsiders Patch and Saint are childhood friends whose lives are irrevocably shaped by contact with a serial killer. Patch is abducted by the man, who imprisons him in darkness where he is visited by a girl. Although he never sees her, an intensely strong bond is formed – but when he escapes, no trace of her is found. The general consensus is that she was a figment of his imagination, but Patch spends years searching for her, and Saint, who loves him, becomes a police officer in order to help. A coming-of-age story as well as a crime novel, the book spans the years from 1975 to 2001, an epic sweep that takes in themes of hope, loss and keeping faith, as well as how the personal is political. Ambitious, powerful and moving, this is a tour de force.
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (Borough, £16.99)
The Van Laar banking family own a chunk of land in New York state’s Adirondack Mountains, including a summer camp for teenagers. When their 13-year-old daughter Barbara goes missing from her cabin in August 1975, history seems to be repeating itself – her older brother Bear vanished without trace in 1961, aged eight. Speculation grows that Barbara has been taken by a recently escaped prisoner, serial killer Jacob “Slitter” Sluiter. Sluiter is thought by many to have been responsible for Bear’s disappearance, rather than the groundsman who was arrested and died in police custody. But nobody is sure, as, despite loudly banging the drum for self-reliance, the Van Laar clan, to whom reputation is all, have a habit of getting others to do their dirty work … Told through multiple points of view, and shifting between the 1950s and the summer of Barbara’s disappearance, this is an intricate and emotionally engaging exploration of class and family dynamics, and a top-notch literary thriller.
