'Think The Secret History meets Agatha Christie' Red
People disappear when they most want to be seen.
Jess Walker, middle child of a middle class family, has perfected the art of vanishing in plain sight. But when she arrives at a concrete university campus under flat, grey, East Anglian skies, her world flares with colour.
Drawn into a tightly-knit group of rule breakers - led by their maverick teacher, Lorna Clay - Jess begins to experiment with a new version of herself. But the dynamic between the friends begins to darken as they share secrets, lovers and finally a tragedy. Soon Jess is thrown up against the question she fears most: what is the true cost of an extraordinary life?
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'A remarkably assured debut, deftly plotted and with vivid, compelling characters that leap off the page' Jojo Moyes
'A must read for fans of mystery novels. Cleverly written and relentlessly intriguing, The Truants is the perfect novel for inquisitive minds to escape into' Marie Claire
'A hypnotic debut . . . Madly original' New York Times Book Review
'The book you'll fall in love with' Stylist
An Observer Book of the Year
An i Book of the Year
A Marie Claire Top 5 Christmas Read
A Times Best New Crime Novel
A Guardian Top 10 Golden Age Detective Novel
An Irish Times Best Debut of the Year
A thrilling and seductive debut about obsession, rivalry and coming of age on a college campus, for readers of Agatha Christie and The Secret History.
'Where do I find Crime?'
'Crime doesn't have its own section,' said the librarian without looking up. 'It's all under fiction.'
Jess Walker heads to an East Anglian university to be taught by Dr Lorna Clay, a brilliant and enigmatic literature professor. She can't believe her luck when she ends up in Lorna's Agatha Christie seminar in her first term, and more so when Lorna begins to take an evident interest in her. While Jess is pulled deeper into Lorna's orbit, she also connects with another acolyte, sexy and fun-loving Georgie, and Georgie's boyfriend, Alex, a South African journalist-in-exile whose stories captivate her.
As the action moves from the flat grey skies of the university campus to a house in the hills on a Mediterranean island, loyalties shift, and Jess's experience of infatuation and betrayal, disappearance and loss gives way to a breathless search for the truth. Unsettling, intriguing and amusing, The Truants is a compulsively readable literary debut about the nature of deceit and the depths to which obsession can drive us.
Reminiscent of Muriel Spark and Donna Tartt. A stunning debut!
