Simon Beckett 
Stone Bruises 

‘Somebody!’ I half-sob and then, more quietly, ‘Please.’ The words seem absorbed by the afternoon heat, lost amongst the trees. In their aftermath, the silence descends again. I know then that I m not going anywhere…Sean is on the run. We don’t know why and we don’t know from whom, but we do know he’s abandoned his battered, blood-stained car in the middle of an isolated part of rural France at the height of a sweltering summer. Desperate to avoid the police, he takes to the parched fields and country lanes but his leg is caught in a vicious animal trap. Near unconscious from pain and loss of blood, he is freed and taken in by two women – daughters of the owner of a rundown local farm with its ramshackle barn, blighted vineyard and the brooding lake. And it’s then that Sean’s problems really start… This nail-shredder of a thriller – like the fiction of Nicci French or Gillian Flynn – holds you from the beginning, tightening its grip as the story unfurls and shocks you with its final twist.