The Keepers of Truth

Young Bill is an intrepid journalist, eager to paint the world in print with the truth as he sees it. Having been handed the tradition of writing for the town paper by its founder, his grandfather, Bill wrestles with its flaccidity and against the rigidity of his editor, Sam Perkins. Bill longs to insert lines such as 'It's not hard to find casualties. What's hard is to get people to admit they are casualties,' but more usually he's stuck with reporting events such as the Auxiliary Firemen's Wives' bakeoff. Living as he does in a dying industrial town in the Midwest, he points out that he can play the maverick when he chooses. Of course, the introduction to this laconic and deceptively laid-back novel sets the dry brushwood in place for some real news to spark. When local layabout Ronny Lawton reports his father missing, the finger points firmly at him - his father's missing finger, that is, which is discovered by the police on the basement steps at the Lawton house. As the prospect of some real live violence enlivens the sleepy town, Bill is sucked further into the mystery than he intends, and Collins, a master of narrative suspense, keeps his hero on the brink. Disturbing, pacy and full of incident, you won't be able to put this down. (Kirkus UK)