The Screaming Tree — Phil Lovesey

Complex psychological thriller from the author of When the Ashes Burn: `Phil Lovesey is among the most talented of the new wave of young British crime writers' Marcel Berlins, The Times As a seven-year-old boy, William Dickson goes into the woods with his friend Fat Norris and watches as he falls to his death from a tree. Friends and family couldn't be more sympathetic - as if they don't realize how much William is to blame. Fat Norris is the first, but William soon claims other victims, particularly when he sees just how easy it is for him to kill and get away with it: a woman who attacks him, a school bully and a teenage yob all fall prey to his murderous impulses, without him ever arousing the slightest suspicion. It's only much later that a throwaway remark by his mother casts a whole new light on William's crimes. Can his memory of past events be completely trusted? Or is there an even more sinister and complex reason for the shadow of death that has hung over him since he went into the woods?