COATES’S PICK OF THE MONTH’S BEST THRILLERS
Alarmed by a lack of action from the local police,Tuva puts up “Missing” posters and interviews Tammy’s former boyfriends who may have abducted her.
She keeps returning to the sinister residents of Black River, on the outskirts of Gavrik, who are deeply suspicious of outsiders.
With someone sabotaging her efforts by taking down the posters,Tuva must stay one step ahead to unlock the secrets of the strange community and find her friend before it is too late.
Black River is the third instalment of a series that has breathed new life into Scandi Noir and Tuva is a wonderfully crafted heroine whom it is easy to cheer for.
The sense of foreboding slowly builds throughout the novel before Dean delivers a cracking finale.
THE HOLDOUT
Graham Moore
Orion, £12.99 FIFTEEN-year-old Jessica Silver, heiress to a billion-dollar fortune, vanishes on her way home from school and
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her teacher Bobby Nock becomes the prime suspect.
Despite no body being found, it seems an open-andshut case for the prosecution when details of their “improper” relationship emerge.
That is until Maya Seale, a young woman on the jury at Nock’s trial, becomes “the holdout” who refuses to accept the guilty vote of the other 11 jurors. After days of argument, Maya persuades the rest of the jury to clear him. But this decision haunts them all.
And then, a decade later, the jurors reunite for a TV show and one of them is found dead in Maya’s hotel room.
As Maya becomes the prime suspect, she’s determined to prove her innocence.
Knowing the killer has to be one of the other jurors, she starts digging into long-buried secrets from the Bobby Nock trial.
The Holdout is the first legal thriller from author Graham Moore, the Oscar-winning scriptwriter of The Imitation Game which starred Benedict Cumberbatch.
It was inspired by his experience of jury service in New York 11 years ago, so is packed with authentic detail and, with a satisfying number of twists in a riveting plot, deserves to become a bestseller.