THRILLERS  | Daily Mail Online

THE MEMORY WOOD

by Sam Lloyd (Bantam Press £12.99, 384 pp)

This taut, spooky debut charts the fate of Elissa, a stunningly bright 13-year-old chess prodigy who is abducted in broad daylight from a tournament in Bournemouth.

The police know only that she was forced into an old white van. But then comes the first of a series of corkscrew twists. Kidnapped Elissa encounters a 12-year-old boy called Elijah, who takes refuge from the world in what he calls the ‘Memory Wood’ near his home in Hampshire, and spies on the man who abducts children.

But Elijah does not help Elissa to escape. He is lonely, and he wants to keep her as a friend, even though he knows another girl died at the hands of the kidnapper. So begins a Hitchcockian game of cat and mouse, with Elissa trying to outwit melancholy Elijah as the only way to survive. 

Beautifully told, with two superbly drawn young protagonists, Lloyd is a rare new thriller talent.

THE GOOD KILLER

by Harry Dolan (Head of Zeus £18.99, 352 pp)

It is not exactly common to describe thrillers as fun and entertaining, but it’s fair to say this one most certainly is.

Former soldier Sean Tennant is living quietly in Houston, Texas, with his girlfriend Molly, when his life is thrown into chaos. A troubled loner goes on a shooting spree in a shopping mall. Tennant is there and ends the slaughter with two deadly shots, becoming a hero with his name all over the news.

The trouble is this brings him to the attention of two men he thought he’d left in his past, and he and Molly are forced to flee.

So begins a Bonnie and Clyde-style chase across the U.S., from Montana to Tennessee, New York to Michigan, with the pair only just ahead of their psychopathic pursuers.

Written in Dolan’s characteristically sophisticated prose, the action never stops, and the longer the chase goes on the more you sympathise with Sean and Molly.

THE WRECKAGE

by Robin Morgan-Bentley (Trapeze £14.99, 336 pp)

This splendidly creepy debut opens with teacher Ben driving along the motorway to school one morning when Adam, a husband and father, jumps in front of his car injuring himself badly.

The shock has a catastrophic effect on reserved, uncertain Ben, who is plagued by intense feelings of guilt and shame.

Desperate to salve his conscience, he tries to find out why the accident happened. At the hospital, where Adam is now in an induced coma, he encounters Adam’s wife, Alice, and their seven-year-old son, Max.

Ben becomes obsessed with the pair, an obsession which grows stronger when Alice accepts she must make the decision to switch off her husband’s life support.

Ben stealthily inveigles his way into Alice’s life, making friends with her son, and becoming part of the family, until things start to go frighteningly wrong: haunting stuff.