Tall Bones by Anna Bailey

Author: Anna Bailey 

Title: Tall Bones

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021

Pages: 352

Genre: Thriller 

     When Emma leaves her friend Abi at a party in the woods, she believes that their lives are just beginning. Many things will happen that night, but Emma will never see her friend again. What happens next in Whistling Ridge is so much more than the story of a missing girl. It's a story of secrets and shame, regrets and rage, love and lies. For Abi's disappearance cracks open the façade of the small town, peeling away the layers of its secret past. Even within Abi's own family, there are questions to be asked - of Noah, the older brother whom Abi betrayed, of Jude, the shining younger sibling who hides his battle scars, of Dolly, her mother, and Samuel, her father - both in thrall to the fiery preacher who holds the entire town in his grasp. Then there is Rat, the outsider, whose presence both unsettles and excites those around him. Anything could happen in Whistling Ridge, this tinder box of small-town rage. All it will take is just one spark...the truth of what happened that night at the Tall Bones.

     If not for a friend of mine I don't think I would have ever come across Tall Bones. I can't recall seeing it on social media or for that matter my local book shop. But that is why it is always good to be friends with a fellow bookworm. They get to suggest titles that they stumbled across that otherwise you might not have. For me I love these kinds of books, maybe it's having grown up in a small town I can see reflections back of people and places I can recognize. So throw in a good mystery and I usually know I can settle in for a good few hours content to get lost into the mystery before me. But with Bailey's debut novel would she be able to rise to the challenge off the bat or this end up being a cliched bonfire? There is after all only one way to tell.

     For the most part, I would say that the characters she has created to inhabit this rural town are both realistic and not so subtlety and casually cruel. It's a place where everyone knows everyone's else business, so it becomes hard to shy away from the judgment of others and escape the rath of a fire-breathing preacher. Having spent a great deal of time stateside for me some of this feels eerily familiar to places I visited all be it a little heightened. Maybe when the inhabitants of a town feel there is no chance to escape this anger and rage swirls around like a tornado ever-increasing and tearing apart everything in its wake.  But then again they might just be completely oblivious, so wrapped up in when is happing they can never see where this path will lead them. Either way, Bailey has produced characters that I may not like but whose stories I became captivated by. It's like watching a wreck on the freeway happen in slow motion. You become completely unable to look away no matter how horrible the events unfolding are. Desperate to see what will happen when the dust has settled. Who will be leaving in cuffs or on a blanket-covered gurney?

     But what may have started out as the tale of a missing girl was never going to remain one single thread encircling a small town. As is so often the case one tragic event is sure to pull to the surface every nefarious deed that has been simmering just below the surface. In Bailey's strong narrative she manages to show this not only in reassessments and jealousy that has been festering for decades but also in far more modern elements of a world falling apart. Like every where people are bleeding away from rural living in favor of cities and the hunt for jobs. Her older heroes seem to view themselves as living in a closed circuit trapped by their own demons and lashing out and hurting those closest. Whilst those who are younger yearn for more, desperate for some grand adventure and to escape this stuffy and suffocating world their parents have crafted. At times it feels as those they have built their very own ring in hell a torment designed to cut right to the bone. But I guess this happens far too often in the real world just as much as in fiction. 

     Just as much as this is a mystery to be picked apart, the tale this author tells us is one of morals and living up to your word. That far too often we are fallible to not only outside influences but our own minds jumping to conclusions without any evidence to back them up. But maybe this is what it means to be human we are after all broken creatures in an imperfect world. And as this tale grows dark and more sinister in nature you can feel this savage beast clawing at our souls. At times you want to scream at these people. To try and give them some form of clarity they are unable to see for themselves. But this after all is not how it works and instead, we have to watch from behind a sounded proofed wall. Unable to change what has already been set in stone.