THE SCHOOLHOUSE

by Sophie Ward, Corsair, £16.99, ebook £9.99

★★III

Sophie Ward’s second novel is a blend of thriller, police procedural and teenage diary, predominantly set

in an experimental school in the 1970s. Protagonist Isobel becomes entangled in the search for a missing schoolgirl in the 1990s, as her own troubled past rears its ugly head.

The mysteries of the child’s disappearance and of what scarred Isobel so deeply 15 years earlier make the book a page-turner, with some intriguing themes of trauma and abuse. But the links between the cases are tenuous, and breakthroughs by investigators solving them appear at times contrived.