Dead Scared
by S.J. Bolton (read by Lisa Coleman)
Random House (audiobook)

S.J. Bolton is a rising star of British crime writing. As was proved by early novels such as Now You See Me and, more recently, Sacrifice, she constructs gripping narratives with plenty of twists and narrative hooks. Her heroine, for the second time, is Detective Constable Lacey Flint. Smart but vulnerable, she enjoys an increasingly fraught flirtation with her superior, Mark Joesbury. This helps the reader get into her head in ways denied by Now You See Me. Here, Flint investigates a spate of suicides in several Cambridge colleges. There are few clues: the victims have hardly any connections with one another. So Flint is sent undercover to see what she can uncover about these students. This Oxbridge thriller will likely draw comparisons with Colin Dexter's Oxford-based Inspector Morse but Bolton is a far trickier, less conventional writer: she is unafraid to shock with a touch of gothic, for example. Lisa Coleman reads with a pretty straight face, even when she is faced with over-egged nonsense such as: 'The January chill comes drifting over the Fens, and wraps itself across the city like a paedophile's hand around that of a small unresisting child.' Yikes.