THRILLERS  | Daily Mail Online

MY DARK VANESSA

by Kate Elizabeth Russell (4th Estate £12.99, 384 pp)

This is a terrifying but vitally important story about an affair between a 15-year-old schoolgirl and her 42-year-old English teacher, and it is an incredibly impressive debut from the American-born Russell.

Vanessa Wye was just 15 when she first had sex with Jacob Strane — and there is no doubt that she did so willingly.

Red-headed Vanessa believed absolutely that he had fallen in love with her, and that he was destined to be the great passion of her life.

Now, in 2017, she is 32 and Strane has just been accused of sexual abuse by another former pupil. Vanessa never thought of her relationship with Strane as abusive. But now, in the #MeToo era, she is being asked to redefine her relationship as one based on her rape as a minor.

Vanessa never believed that was true, but stealthily another, darker, truth emerges.

Elegantly nuanced, and confronting one of the most complex issues of our time, this explodes off the page with great power and will have the world talking.

THE FAMILIAR DARK

by Amy Engel (Hodder £14.99, 256 pp)

In Barren Springs, a small, poverty-stricken town in the Ozarks of Missouri, two 12‑year-old girls are found with their throats cut in an old playground. Their blood stains the snow that has fallen on that chill April afternoon.

This is a crime of such barbarity that it profoundly shocks all the inhabitants. It is inconceivable that the killing could be the work of one of their own. It must have been an outsider. Or must it?

Eve Taggert, mother of Junie, one of the two murdered girls, is overcome with grief but is also determined to find out who killed her beloved daughter.

Eve sets out on a personal crusade to get to the bottom of what happened — and why.

On the way, she finds herself depending on her own mother, with whom she has always struggled to get along. She also begins to understand the pressures that can affect even the most apparently stable families.

A story about grief, pretence and family, written by a former criminal defence lawyer, it tugs at the heartstrings with its raw emotional truth.

THE BLACK ART OF KILLING

by Matthew Hall (Michael Joseph £14.99, 464pp)

From this BAFTA award-winning screenwriter comes a Bond-style thriller for the 21st century.

Dr Leo Black is trying to forget his time as an SAS officer and immerse himself in academic life at Oxford, as a modern history lecturer. He is seeking a permanent position, but his military background counts against him among the liberal members of the Senior Common Room.

Then his former colleague and friend Ryan Finn, also retired from the regiment, is mysteriously killed while acting as a private security guard to a young scientist at a conference in Paris. Their former commanding officer begs Black to help bring those who killed him to justice.

Black hesitates, but then agrees that he may have the particular skills needed to help find the killers.

So begins a chase to stop the villains using new technology to influence the workings of the brain. Written with pace and great panache, it feels like a movie already.