From the Goodreads summary:
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 (3 stars) . . . . .
by C.J. Tudor (Goodreads Author)
Michael J.'s review
Feb 27, 2018 ·
bookshelves: adult-thriller, crime, fiction, ha-2018-pages-read-challenge, murder, novel
This is very impressive for a debut novel, and showcases a skillful writer with great storytelling sensibilities. I'm going to watch for C.J. Tudor's next novel, and I'd include this on the short list of new writers worth checking out.
However, I don't feel justified rating this higher than three stars, because there are some plot threads that aren't answered satisfactorily, and the ending was a little disappointing for a book where every single one of the featured characters (including the main protagonist) could be a suspect in readers' minds. The revelations in the final chapters were somewhat of a let-down.
The first-person twisty narrative details one person's (Eddie's) observations, reflections and obsession with a 1986 event that haunts him and seems to take up a large portion of his life, including lifestyle choices.
Tudor shares his innermost thoughts, and chapters alternate between his memories of 1986, and thirty years later in 2016, when the crime is finally solved (but not before some additional murders). She's able to both accurately portray the thinking of a 12 year old Eddie, as well as the 42 year old Ed, still living in the same neighborhood in his parents' former home.
By the time I'd reached page 184, I felt that I'd solved the murder as well as the answer to where the missing victim's head was being stored. There were plenty of hints dropped and reasons to suspect others, but I admit I was influenced by this in my further reading of The Chalk Man. By page 230, I had second thoughts and began to doubt the identify of the murderer. Without spoiling the story, the reader may be misled by several other incidents in the story and never suspect the true culprit. I certainly was, and it resulted in the ending being less effective for me. (Although I was correct about the hiding place of the dismembered head).
The story is well-paced and suspenseful, but not as frightening as some of the advance reviews might seem to indicate. I also didn't find the events very frightening, just creepy and mysterious. Tudor may have been trying to create a sense of the paranormal in the early chapters of the novel, but seems to have abandoned that idea (and rightfully so) as the novel moves on and readers learn more about the characters.
The characters are the best part of The Chalk Man. The conversations and dialogue are convincing and help prevent Eddie/Ed's tale from being a rambling exposition.
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