Book Review: The Chalk Man by CJ Tudor

In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.

In 2016, Eddie is fully grown and thinks he's put his past behind him, but then he gets a letter in the mail containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank--until one of them turns up dead. That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.

My Review:
I went into this book having read mixed reviews on Goodreads and on the blogs of friends. I thought I knew what the plot was going to be based on reading the blurb but to be honest it turned out to be different. I expected the murder near the start of the book and maybe the murderer stalking the kids who find the body, with lots of horror but it wasn't like that. We get a lot about the events in the town before the body is discoverd which sets the scene for everything that follows. We are shown these past events but the real answers aren't given until the present timeline. Instead the events are presented in one way and when we switch to the present each time, secrets and lies begin to unravel. 

Eddie, Fat Gav, Metal Mickey, Hoppo and Nicky are enjoying the summer before school goes back and take a trip to the fair. Tragedy strikes when Eddie and his teacher Mr Halloran witness a fatal accident and are hailed as heroes for saving a badly injured girl. It is just the start of events with Mickey's brother Sean and his bully friends targeting Eddie, Nicky suffers abuse at the hands of her religious father, who also targets Eddie's mother for running a new abortion clinic in the town. It is Mr Halloran who always seems to be there at the right time to intervene in events and he introduces Eddie to the chalk game. However it is the chalk messages that lead Eddie into trouble and lead the kids to find the girl's body which starts a new scandal in the town. But who killed her? Is it connected to the drowning death of a boy?

The plot is split into two, following Eddie and his friends as kids, and then the present day plot where the old friends are all back in town and facing an awkward reunion. It's hard to say which timeline I actually liked the best because both were important to the story. With the kids story, we see the tragic events of the accident at the fair, the start of the chalk game, the bullies, the unexpected death and the scandal involving their teacher. We see the events through Eddie's eyes but answers to all that happened then are not revealed until the present timeline. It explores the complicated friendships of the friends and how things started to fall apart for them as the summer wore on until the gang drifted apart.

In the present, Eddie is living day to day in his dull life with lodger Chloe, and it is turned upside down by the arrival of one of the old gang who wants to write about the events of that summer, something the rest of the gang want to forget. Nobody is happy to see Mickey back and Eddie is considering whether or not to cooperate with his investigation when Mickey disappears. Who wants to get rid of Mickey or keep the truth secret? There are certainly a few suspects. Eddie has a couple of surprising secrets of his own about that summer and so do all of his friends, and I liked the gradual reveal of the secrets as the book continues rather than just one big reveal in the final pages. It was interesting to find out what really happened in each of the major events through that fateful summer and I pretty much read it in one go with comfort and food breaks thrown in! At times there didn't seem to be a lot happening but the gradual twists were more than enough to keep me entertained and I very much enjoyed it.

There was very much a Stephen King's 'It' feel to this thriller but without the monster element. It had the split timeline, the run ins with the evil bullies, Nicky being abused by her dad like Bev was and a couple of dead kids as well. But it is not a copy of It. This is very much a thriller rather than a horror and everyone is very much human. The people get angry with each other and decide to do petty revenge which then spirals into something bad and unexpected. I liked how complex it was and a few things close to the end really did surprise me which was nice. 

I wasn't expecting to like this book but I really enjoyed the way the author showed us the events and then peeled off the layers around the event to show what really happened. The characters were interesting and I really loved Mr Halloran. He was certainly the most interesting character though I very much liked Fat Gav as well. It was also great to get a really good British thriller with familiar language and pop culture. I am certainly going to read more by the author.

Read January 2019.
4 stars.