Buried Thunder
By Tim Bowler
Published by OUP
ISBN 978 0 19 272838
Tim Bowler is an experienced storyteller with 20 books and numerous awards behind him. He always comes up with a very good read, full of demanding ideas, believable characters and a clever plot. Buried Thunder is a bone-chilling and eerie story that will hook you from its first page.
Aimed at older teenage readers, it will also enthral any adult who enjoys this sort of novel. As the story begins, Maya, 14, has just moved to the countryside with her brother and parents, who are taking over a country hotel. One day, while walking in the nearby woods, she sees a pair of intense yellow eyes staring at her. Unsettled, she runs further into the woods and stumbles over three dead bodies with a scary figure standing over one of them.
Scared out of her wits, she runs home and her parents immediately phone the police. But when the police search the woods, they don't find any bodies. Is Maya imagining things or is she simply playing a time-wasting joke? She becomes more upset when a policewoman who resembles one of the bodies comes to the hotel.
Maya begins to hear scraping and scratching noises in her bedroom. Is she going mad? Bowler builds the tension right from the start, introducing an interesting mix of weird characters who all seem to have something to hide.
At the end, Bowler neatly ties up all the loose ends with a clever climax. You wouldn't want to read Buried Thunder at night.