Little Deaths by Emma Flint

As a single mother, cocktail waitress and incorrigible man-eater, Ruth Malone is the epicentre of neighbourhood gossip. But when her two young children go missing, she soon finds herself the focus of a police investigation as well. Will Ruth’s refusal to play up to the image which society demands ultimately cost her the freedom she cherishes?

Set in 1960s New York, Little Deaths purports to be a sleek and stylish thriller, with more hard-boiled characters than you can shake a stroller at. Reporters, detectives and lawyers vie for the title of least runny yolk in this pressure cooker of a novel. One which unfortunately promises a little more than it can deliver. The cast of characters are made up largely of two-dimensional affairs who refuse to talk to the press one minute, before spilling more beans than a leaky Haribo bag the next. Meanwhile, the two figures of real intrigue – the unreliably lovelorn narrator Pete and the enigmatic Ruth, at the centre of everything – don’t have their ambiguities explored nearly enough.

Yet for all that, the fast pace of the book pulls the reader along with its momentum, while the hazy 60s setting is brimming with atmospheric tension. Fans of the genre will be hooked to the final page just to find out whodunnit, but hopefully more is to come from this fledgling author.