Honestly you need to buy this book now, NOW! Seriously what a book - it is amazing.
It's hard to believe that this is Fiona Cummins' debut novel; she writes with such an assured and developed voice which from the opening sentence drew me in and kept me writhing in her hand throughout. There was none of that working myself into it, the clarity of the characters meant that they were there as fully formed images at the onset of the story. And I know I use the cliché of being on the edge of my seat in a few reviews, but this is just something more, it had that rare knack of giving me that churning feeling in the pit of my stomach. The sense of impending doom prevailing my mood at several points in my reading.
The unravelling lives of the families of the missing children is all too evident, and the anguish which they go through is clearly portrayed. Indeed the anguish of the kidnapped children is pitifully sad and told through a child's voice rather than an adult's one. I gave a rare little smile to myself when young Clara spoke of her mother's answer to her having a tummy ache, having said that to my own daughter at regular occurrences.
Rattle, I hope, is only the introduction to DS Etta Fitzroy, one of the main officers investigating the kidnapping. We're given a background (obviously troubled, but then name a good detective that isn't) which colours her behaviour in the story; but needless to say she's definitely a feisty, sometimes irresponsible, but always brave detective. She certainly goes through the mill here, and quite how she manages to keep picking herself up is impressive to say the least.
And then we have the ever-apparent, evil figure looming over everyone and everything. Given the name "Ol' Bloody Bones" by Jakey, he is like a Death-Eater sucking the light out of all the goodness. He's truly creepy, even in those light, loving moments he shared with his wife he still managed to have a malevolence jumping to the surface. He's obviously deranged but the totally lack of empathy is chilling, and he certainly is reminiscent of the Hannibal Lecter character that's for sure.
Aside from all of this, what I loved about Rattle is that it relied on no clichéd twists and turns, it's just a rollicking tension-filled read. I'm sure you've managed to deduce by now that I ADORED this book, there is not one thing that I could even start to, or want to, criticise.
Fiona Cummins is almost definitely a bright new shining voice onto the thriller scene. I am firmly placing this on the best-seller list for 2017, and making it into one of my top ten reads of this year.
A magnificent book, I cannot wait for the next one!
Rattle is out on 26/01/2017 - pre-order it NOW.
