the CHALK MAN

Okay, I knew C. J. Tudor wrote a bestselling whodunit, but a whodunit to the nth degree? I was  trying to figure out who the murderer was (and I picked someone) then later in the novel my pick got murdered! Then it happened again. How many bananas do I have to peel before I find out who dismembered the young girl early in the novel? A lot...I guess. The chapters move back and forth between 1986 (the original murder) and 2016 (30 years later). This alternating years system seems to be the popular way of writing novels nowadays. And where it was previously cumbersome...it’s now seems tighter than a duck’s ass. Does that make any sense? C. J. Tudor has mastered cliffhanging chapter endings that are 30 years apart. I wish I could come up with a better term for twist and turns, because the author had a inordinate amount of them in her maiden novel. Great job of keeping the reader in the fog and off kilter.
 
In the Prologue, “The girl’s head rested on a small pile of orange - and - brown leaves...her almond eyes stared up at the canopy of sycamore, beech, and oak, but they didn’t see...They didn’t blink as shiny black beetles scurried over their pupils. A short distance away, a pale hand stretched out from its own small shroud of leaves as if searching for help...the rest of her body lay out of reach, hidden in other secluded spots around the woods. Close by, a twig snapped, loud as a firecracker in the stillness, and a flurry of birds exploded out of the undergrowth. Someone approached.” That someone picked up her head and put it in a bag “where it nestled among a few broken stubs of chalk.” I failed to figure out who the person was that picked up the girl’s head. I didn’t find out until the book’s final pages. But the question was always...was that the murderer or the finder?

The story centers around a clique of five twelve-year-old friends living in Anderbury, England in 1986. The narrator of the story is Eddie “Munster” Adams (nicknamed so because of the Addams Family and  Munsters TV shows). His friends are: Fat Gav, Metal Mickey (because of his mouth braces), David Hopkins (Hoppo), and a girl named Nicky, the daughter of the local Vicar, Reverend Martin (this man seemed strange). That was the group. They were constantly harassed by Metal Mickey’s older brother, Sean, and his gang of young toughs. So when did the problems for Eddie’s gang start? On page three, “The problem was, none of us ever agreed on the exact beginning. Was it when Fat Gav got the bucket of chalks for his birthday? Was it when we started drawing the chalk figures or when they started to appear on their own? Was it the terrible accident? Or when they found the first body? Any number of beginnings. Any of them, I guess you could call the start. But really, I think it all began on the day of the fair...because it was the day that everything stopped being normal.”
 
This was the first year that Eddie’s bunch were allowed to go to the annual fair by themselves.The five kids had no intention of following their parents warnings and instructions. “There’s nothing better than doing something you shouldn’t and getting one over on an adult while doing it.” Sometime during the day, Eddie loses his wallet. He thinks he left it at the hot dog stand. He runs over there by himself and sees the new teacher in town, Mr. Halloran, eating a hot dog and drinking a blue slushy through a straw and watching the Waltzers (one of the amusement rides), or was he watching the beautiful girl waiting in line? “It was hard to miss the Pale Man. He was very tall, for a start, and thin. He wore stonewashed jeans, a baggy white shirt and a big straw hat. He looked like...David Bowie. Mr. Halloran was an albino...was he a good man? He looked scary. Suddenly there was a horrible accident. One of the Waltzer cars broke loose into the beautiful girl. She was violently pushed into the hot dog stand. Eddie kneeled by her...was she dead? “Help me”, she rasped. A single eye stared at Eddie, the other one rested limply on her cheek. “Her lower leg was barely hanging on, tethered only by stringy tendons.” With Eddie’s help, Mr. Halloran stopped the bleeding and saved her life. Eddie now knew her only as the Waltzer Girl. They were claimed local heroes by the newspapers for saving the girl's life.

The story moves to 2016. “The letter arrives without a flourish or fanfare or even a sense of foreboding. It slips through the letter box, sandwiched between a charity envelope for Macmillan and a flyer for a new pizza takeaway.” Eddie is now a 42 year old teacher, still living in his mum’s house (mum lives on her own and dad is dead). Eddie has a somewhat attractive boarder named Chloe (I kept asking myself...who is she?). Later on in the day... “I sit down at the desk. I’m pretty sure Chloe isn’t at home and won’t be back anytime soon, but I’ve locked the door, anyway. I open the envelope I received this morning and look at it’s contents again.There’s no writing. But the message is very clear. A stick figure with a noose around its neck. It’s drawn in crayon, which is wrong. Perhaps that’s why, as an added reminder, the sender has included something else. I tip up the envelope and it falls to the desk in a small cloud of dust. A single piece of white chalk.” Did the other members of Eddie’s circle get the same letter, or did one of them send it to the other four? All that excitement happened in the first 42 pages of C. J. Tudor’s novel. It’s a tough novel to put down at bedtime. Maybe it’s a bedtime story?

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I’m really enjoying this recent crop of young suspense writers. Most of them are very talented woman, who know how to put a thriller together with savvy enthusiasm. Okay, what are the novels I recently reviewed? During the last three years, these are my favorites:

Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train (see my review of 8/16/2015), Ruth Ware’s The Woman in Cabin 10 (see my review of 9/7/2016), JP Delaney’s The Girl Before (see my review of 2/3/2017), Paula Hawkins’ Into the Water (see my review of 5/21/2017), Ruth Ware’s The Lying Game (see my review of 9/19/2017) and A. J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window (see my review of 1/25/2018).

So what was my favorite? Hands down, it was JP Delaney’s The Girl Before! Great writing, great suspense. Out of the above writers, JP Delaney and A. J. Finn are the only two male writers (both writing under pen names).