The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

Kirby should be dead. Attacked by a vicious murderer as a child, she somehow survived and grew up. Now she is an intern at a Chicago newspaper, trawling through crime records to trace her killer. Kirby is convinced she was the victim of a serial killer who has attacked before and will attack again.

And she's right. Harper Curtis attacked her with a knife, has killed before and will kill again. But what Kirby doesn't realise is that Curtis is almost untraceable. He has the perfect getaway vehicle - only in this case it's a house which allows him to roam Chicago through the ages, searching for the "shining girls" he is obsessed by. Curtis can travel forwards and backwards in time, killing and escaping justice.

With this original premise Lauren Beukes has created what I can imagine will be one of 2013's hottest crime fiction picks. It reminded me of Stephen King at his best,  merging horror and crime to produce a gripping thriller. The book is very well constructed, following Kirby's quest and Curtis' s rampages simultaneously. In lesser hands this could have been confusing (I confess here to having been terminally confused by The Time Traveller's Wife), but Beukes has clearly planned the novel very carefully and it is easy to follow both storylines.

The book is most satisfying when the "loops" of the storyline close together: when Kirby finds one of Curtis' s victims and pieces together what we as the reader have already seen happen,  or when we see Curtis' s viewpoint on the attack on Kirby. The parts of the book following Curtis's murderous outings to the future can be occasionally hard to read; the pity you feel for the victims can make it difficult to read about their horrific deaths at Curtis's hands.

I also really enjoyed the journey through Chicago's history in this novel.  Beukes has clearly done her research; we see a travelling circus of the 1940s, a college student in the 80s, a women's liberationist working in an abortion clinic in the 1970s. Having visited Chicago last year on holiday, I found this particularly interesting,  and made much more vivid by the precise references to streets and parks Beukes carefully gives us.

This fast-paced thriller deserves to be a summer hit: as a reader you care deeply about Kirby's quest for vengeance on the man who tried to steal her life, and fear Curtis's powers to destroy lives. The novel builds to a thrilling climax, and there's even a hint of romance for Kirby. A precision-made thriller, guaranteed to have you turning pages late into the night, made distinctive by the supernatural element.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes will be published by Harper Collins on 25 April. I must thank the publishers who kindly provided me with a review copy via Net Galley.

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Ten Things I've Learnt About Love by Sarah Butler: vivid, contemporary women's fiction

Alice is losing her father. In their family home in North London, Malcolm is succumbing to the lung cancer that he has hidden from his daughter while she travels abroad. Recalled to London by her sisters,  Alice arrives just in time to see Malcolm before he dies.

Daniel is losing himself. Homeless and becoming ill, he wanders London searching for his lost daughter and leaving beautiful messages for her in the urban landscape. Daniel sees letters as colours,  and creates collages of detritus in which words are spelled by these colours.

Sarah Butler's moving novel follows Alice and Daniel's journeys as they learn about themselves and their feelings. It's beautifully crafted: colour is central to the novel, and the descriptions of Daniel's collages are a pleasure to read. The novel is also in some ways a love letter to London: in a touching sequence towards the end of the novel, Alice and Daniel walk through London together. Butler describes this walk with a poet's eye and a Londoner's love for the hidden corners of the capital.

Lists can sometimes be the sign of lazy writing; however, in this novel Butler uses them very effectively as a structural device. Each chapter alternates between Alice's and Daniel's viewpoint and opens with a list of what the character has learnt or felt since the previous chapter. The lists are compelling in their succintness; they are a really simple but original way of developing the characters for the readers.

One word of warning: this novel is truly moving and at times almost unbearably poignant. The writing is so vivid and the emotions of the characters so well observed that I found I couldn't race through it. Instead I found myself reading it piece by piece, letting the writing sink in before I was ready to move on.

All in all, I was surprised and touched by Ten Things I've Learnt About Love. An unusually finely-written novel which deserves to be a huge success.

I must thank Pan Macmillan, who kindly provided me with a copy of this novel at their women's fiction party.

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Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer: superior crime fiction

Belinda Bauer's fine crime thrillers have been gaining her fans and critical acclaim since the publication of Blacklands in 2010, a gripping and disturbing novel set on the Yorkshire moors which focused on a serial killer. Hints of the moors murders gave the book a particularly chilling edge and the plot was tightly wound. It was a Richard and Judy pick and deservedly won the CWA Gold Dagger for the best crime novel of 2010.

For her latest novel Bauer has moved away from the Yorkshire setting of Blacklands and its followups, Dark Side and Finders Keepers. Rubbernecker follows the story of young Patrick Fort, an Aspergic anatomy student who stumbles across a murder during a dissection. Patrick feels compelled to trace both the anonymous victim and the murderer, despite facing hostility from the authorities.

In two parallel narratives Bauer also traces the story of the murder victim, who for the most part of his story is on life support in a ward for coma victims,  and the story of a nurse on the same ward who manages to seduce a rich visitor to the ward away from his barely conscious wife. I have to say that I enjoyed Patrick's narrative slightly more than these parallel stories; however, I appreciated the unusual setting of the coma ward, which Bauer used well to explore the difficulties and potentially murky ethics of caring for patients who have very little prospect of recovery.

Patrick is an engaging protagonist, possibly despite his Aspergic personality. There is a hint of The Curious Incident Of the Dog In The Night Time in Bauer's choice of an Aspergic young man as the detective in a crime mystery. However, Patrick is given depth by the inclusion of his childhood as his motivation. As a young boy, Patrick saw his father killed in a road accident, and has since been obsessed by death. Patrick's naivety and lack of comprehension of the emotional reality of death create a real sympathy for this vulnerable protagonist.

Like Bauer's previous novels, Rubbernecker has a cracking plot with a gripping chase scene. There's also some well judged comedy to lighten the mood of the book thanks to Patrick's student housemates. I found myself turning the pages at ever increasing speed as I got towards the novel's denouement. Another fine and unusual crime novel from Bauer: highly recommended.

Transworld kindly provided me with a review copy of this novel via net galley.

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