The Chalk Man
A Novel
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4.1 • 67 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A riveting and brilliantly plotted psychological suspense, this razor-sharp debut will keep readers guessing right up to the shocking ending.
In 1986, Eddie and his friends 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 reader.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A killer’s been claiming victims in an English town, leaving little chalk drawings as a calling card. The Chalk Man ricochets between 1986 and 2016, tracking a group of friends who discovered one of the victims and tracing protagonist Eddie Adams’ attempts to sort out whodunit. C.J. Tudor ratchets up the uncertainty with cleverly developed internal tensions between Eddie and his pals; every time we were ready to dismiss him as a suspect, his peculiarities—sleepwalking, kleptomania, portentous nightmares—threw his role into question again. This spine-tingling mystery totally gripped our imagination.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1986, Eddie Adams, the narrator of British author Tudor's promising debut, and his four best mates, all early adolescents, become ensnared in a series of ghastly events in the picturesque English town of Anderbury, with the nightmarish inevitability of the Grimmest of tales. In the most shocking episode, a mysterious man leads them to the dismembered remains of a teenage girl in the woods. Not surprisingly, these traumas, which also include abuse, sadistic bullying, and a prank that turns deadly, cast a sizeable shadow over the friends' futures. In 2016, Mickey, one of Eddie's old friends, returns to town after more than 20 years away, planning to write a book about the girl's murder upon the occasion of the murder's 30th anniversary. Danger looms after Mickey announces that he knows who really killed the girl (the prime suspect killed himself before his likely arrest). Though Tudor makes a couple of rookie missteps, including excessive plot twists seemingly for the sake of surprise, her storytelling prowess is undeniable.
