On a stifling summer’s day, eleven-year-old Jack and his two sisters sit in their broken-down car, waiting for their mother to come back and rescue them. While the tone is heavy some quirky characters, including Donald the turtle, help to the lighten things up. Having also read and enjoyed "The Beautiful Dead" by Belinda Bauer this book "Snap" was always going to be a winner, I wasn't disappointed - I loved every captivating minute.

The mystery is resolved at about the halfway point and the second half of the book is about collecting the evidence. For some reason, Bauer doesn’t believe that emphasis or gravitas can be achieved without embellishing her sentences with excessive punctuation, italics, or some combination of the two. Not that’s not to say there weren’t surprises because there were a couple of surprising reveals along the way.

Because I’ve never had children of my own I’ve been able and allowed and privileged to actually never let go of that, never have to move beyond it and become a grownup,” she says.

The author really had a knack for creating vibrant and evocative settings and realistic, passionate and memorable characters that leaped off the page. I’m just so annoyed that the ‘oh no the Booker is dying a commercial death’ purists are going to look to this book as a reason not to let genre fiction onto the longlist. The hairless saviour, fence, thief and liar, Louis Bridge proves to be an invaluable help to the young Jack, as Jack finds himself living on the edges of society, surviving and providing for his family by acquiring the skills of a cat burglar. There is no sign of their mother, until days later when her discarded body is discovered stabbed on the side of a road.He is not always the most orthodox or PC character but he is definitely one that needs his own series!