‘Small towns hide the darkest secrets.’
Published in 2016, Tall Oaks, is the debut novel of acclaimed British author Chris Whitaker, which in 2017 won the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger Award. If you read Tall Oaks, you’ll understand why. It’s an absorbing story – well-written and challenging.
The story begins with a not-uncommon crime: a small child, Harry Monroe, disappears, taken one night from his bedroom in his own home in the little town of Small Oaks, somewhere in America.
First the local Sheriff’s department, then the State Police, and eventually the FBI, get involved, but not a trace of the child is found. The obvious suspect is the child’s estranged father, but he has a rock-solid alibi, so the crime cannot be laid at his door. Slowly, as the days, then weeks, then months, go by the attention of the various law enforcement agencies is drawn to newer crimes, while the townspeople start to think of other things.
Jess Monroe, the boy’s distraught mother, is leading the search, relentlessly trying to keep the town’s attention on her missing child, but also at the same time she’s also battling her own self-destructive behaviour. And throughout the story we follow a handful of townspeople, all with secrets, some relevant and some not.
There’s the wealthy couple who live side-by-side, but not really together, who have the tragedy of a dead child in their past, and a locked room in their house.
There’s the mentally slow young man, sole carer of his terminally ill mother, who assists in a photography studio and has ambitions to send one of his own photos to a competition, while dimly realising that there’s something ‘off’ about that picture.
There’s the second-hand car salesman, who never settles anywhere, is always moving and never lets anyone close. But now he’s beginning to fall for one of his customers, an older local woman, called Elena. And there’s the 16-year-old boy, Elena’s son, who has Tourette’s syndrome and ambitions to become a local Godfather. This boy, Manny, brings lightness and even a smile to this otherwise pretty grim story.
My verdict
I liked Tall Oaks very much, although I found it a little slow to get going. It has a ‘cast of thousands’, none of whom gripped me immediately and I confess it wasn’t until I got them all straight in my mind that I started to really enjoy the book. But the solution to the crime, when it comes, is shocking, unexpected and heartbreaking.
As with all his subsequent novels, Chris Whitaker delivers an absorbing story that’s well-written and challenging. And like some of his later books, this isn’t just a crime story. It’s a story of people carrying secrets and a community hit by tragedy. Cleverly, the narrative cascades widely from just one specific event and then takes you ever-further towards the inevitable climax. As I say, I really enjoyed this book and give it 4 stars.
Review by: Freyja
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