All the Hidden Truths by @OneNightStanzas

All the Hidden Truths is the story of a tragic shooting at an Edinburgh college and its aftermath. It is narrated by three women at the heart of the story - the mother of a victim and the mother of the shooter, and DI Helen Birch who is tasked in solving the case. The book is both a "knotty crime novel" and a story of grief "trying to make sense of something that defies reason".

Readers of Kate Atkinson, Denise Mina and Susie Steiner will love it - along with anyone who wants their fiction both moving and gripping.

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[Moira Summers was on the top deck of the number 23 bus, her face turned up to the sun like a cat - it was the first day of the year that could really have been called hot] ***

(Hodder & Stoughton, 9 August 2018, ebook, 352 pages, copy from publisher via NetGalley voluntarily reviewed)

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I was blown away by this book, which offers something fresh to the well-worn thriller genre. There have been a lot of real-life shootings in schools, mostly in America but also at Dunblane in Scotland in 1996. I've read a few books that tackle this subject matter most notably We Need to Talk about Kevin and This Is How It Ends. I've even read a memoir by the mother of one of the Columbine shooters. Yet, All the Hidden Truths managed to surprise me. It's an emotional and shocking book from the first page and I could not put the book down. The story has three different narrators, a DI who needs to find out why a boy went on a shooting spree at the college, the mother of a victim and the shooter's mother. This works really well. My heart broke for Moira, the mother of the shooter. She's demonised by the media and locals, believed to be somehow responsible for her son's crimes. How could she not have known? All the Hidden Truths is full of twists and turns and a corker of a read.