Black Rabbit Summer

They were friends, weren’t they - Pete, Nicole, Eric, Pauly, Raymond? They’d grown up together. But had they ever really liked each other?

When Nicole suggests meeting at the old den, then going to the fair, Pete is up for it, but he soon realises none of his friends are who they once were. That night, old secrets and sexual tensions fuel an atmosphere of latent violence. By morning two people are missing, and Pete’s implicated in a murder enquiry.

This is intense, vivid writing: constantly changing pace and direction whilst skilfully manipulating time. In this darkly disturbing thriller, Brooks juxtaposes the fairground’s hallucinatory disorientating effects alongside Pete’s dissolving certainty in everyone and everything, he thought he knew.  Addictive, complex and incredibly compelling.