Snap
The astonishing Sunday Times bestseller and BBC Between the Covers Book Club pick
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4.2 • 170 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Crime & Thriller Book of the Year (Specsavers National Book Awards)
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018.
'The best crime novel I've read in a very long time.' VAL MCDERMID
SNAP DECISIONS CAN BE DANGEROUS . . .
On a stifling summer's day, eleven-year-old Jack and his two sisters sit in their broken-down car, waiting for their mother to come back and rescue them. Jack's in charge, she'd said. I won't be long.
But she doesn't come back. She never comes back. And life as the children know it is changed for ever.
Three years later, Jack is still in charge - of his sisters, of supporting them all, of making sure nobody knows they're alone in the house, and - quite suddenly - of finding out the truth about what happened to his mother . . .
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'Original, pacy and thoroughly entertaining . . . a cracking read.' CLARE MACKINTOSH
'No one writes crime novels like Belinda Bauer, with a rare blend of darkness, humour and heart. She's a crime writing genius.' C. L. TAYLOR
'Edgy, original and beautifully written, this suspenseful story is dazzlingly good.' Sunday Mirror
'The opening of Snap is one of the most vividly unnerving I have read . . . razor-sharp observation.' Guardian
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Readers are gripped by Snap:
'Full of suspenseful twists and turns' *****
'Twisty, intriguing and so cleverly written I couldn't put it down' *****
'A refreshingly different murder mystery' *****
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
With its compelling characters and continuously shifting plot, Snap is exciting, completely unpredictable and hard to put down. What begins as separate storylines—three young children are abandoned; a gruff London cop adjusts to small-town life; a pregnant woman hides a burglary from her husband—morphs into one dark and brilliant crime thriller. The structure of Belinda Bauer’s novel is particularly strong: new clues, characters and twists are revealed throughout, creating a suspenseful and deeply original read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The gripping opening of this uneven thriller from Bauer (The Beautiful Dead) finds 11-year-old Jack Bright and his two younger sisters left in a car on a British motorway by their mother, Eileen, after a breakdown one summer day in 1998. Losing patience, Jack ventures out of the car in search of his mother only to find a phone booth with a receiver left dangling off the hook. When the police eventually rescue the three siblings, Jack learns that his mother's call for assistance was recorded, but her words were cut off abruptly after she reported that someone in a car was pulling over to help her. Eileen is later found stabbed to death. In 2001, pregnant Catherine While scares off a stranger who breaks into her West Country home; later, she finds a knife next to a birthday card her mother sent her. The message in the card had been crossed out and replaced with the words "I could have killed you." The plot lines predictably overlap, but in a way that feels contrived. Bauer fans will hope for a return to form next time.
Customer Reviews
Impossible to put down
Absolutely Fantastic Read, the way the story jumps from page to page is so captivating. This is truely one of the greatest books I have ever read. Thank you so much Belinda.
Starts off well, ends with a question mark.
After the first couple of chapters, I thought “this should be good”. But police procedures were stretched almost to disbelief and some of the plot was just weird.
Like, how on earth did the Dad come back at that particular time?
A middle-aged female knife manufacturer?
Not my cup of tea. I like my crime novels to be believable.
Great read on a cold winter day
Really enjoyed this book. Easy to read with a good story line. Some of the twists were a bit predictable but still worth a read