Three decades after his circle of friends discover a murder victim while passing secret messages through a chalk-figure code of their invention, Eddie finds himself targeted by someone who is using their former communication methods to torment and kill his friends.
Three decades after his circle of friends is traumatized by the discovery of a murder victim while passing secret messages through a chalk-figure code of their invention, Eddie finds himself targeted by an unknown adversary who is using their former communication methods to torment and kill his friends. A first novel.
"Narrated by 'Eddie' who receives a chalk drawing of a stick figure that hurtles him back to an innocent childhood game 30 years before which went terribly, terribly wrong. As history begins to repeat itself, it seems the game was never really over" --
“I haven’t had a sleepless night due to a book for a long time. The Chalk Man changed that.”
—Fiona Barton, New York Times bestselling author of The Widow
A riveting and relentlessly compelling psychological suspense debut that weaves a mystery about a childhood game gone dangerously awry, and will keep readers guessing right up to the shocking ending
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.
Expertly alternating between flashbacks and the present day, The Chalk Man is the very best kind of suspense novel, one where every character is wonderfully fleshed out and compelling, where every mystery has a satisfying payoff, and where the twists will shock even the savviest reader.
