Snap Paperback – May 21, 2019

I decided I would read all the books long-listed for the 2024 Booker awards. Snap blew me away and is my favorite of all. If you only have time to read one novel, read this book.A thesaurus could provide me with a host of superlatives, but I'll keep this simple. Snap is full of surprises, tenderness, great characters and even humor. It's a great police procedural that questions traditional concepts of right and wrong. It made me wonder what the characters will be like in a few years.

First, I rate "Snap" 4 1/2 stars. I deducted 1/2 a star because I felt that an epilogue was needed.What a pleasure it is to read such a well balanced crime novel. The intertwining of a cold case murder of a pregnant mother, with her son's life as a present day master burgler, and also that son's interaction with a pregnant woman whose husband he believes is his mother's killer. Other, smaller, circumstances are also woven into the plot line, resulting in a book that holds a readers attention from beginning to end, with twists and turns along the way.The cast of characters is well developed and interesting.There is a shifting between past and present and Jack's dreams/nightmares.Crime novel enthusiasts will not be disappointed! Yes. I recommend "Snap".

Jack is a British boy living on his own after his pregnant mother was murdered and his father abandoned his family. The problem is Jack is a young teen; he also has two younger sisters who depend on him to survive and be kept out of the social services system. His only help comes from Smooth Louis, a local con-artist who teaches Jack how to burgle houses.DCI John Marvel is assigned to catch the burglar. He has problems of his own. He was demoted from a higher profile position as a homicide detective on another police force. He is known for getting results but breaks police protocol to do it. Goldilocks, as the burglar is labeled, has broken into over one hundred houses, sleeping in the owners' beds, stealing food, and taking showers. Marvel is determined to catch him with his assistants, DS Reynolds and Rice, who are alternately puzzled by and wary of their new boss. Both anxious to make a good impression, they wrong-foot themselves constantly confirming Marvel's opinion that he has been stuck in a backwater town.Belinda Bauer's novel is well-plotted, well-written and executed. In many crime thrillers, the plot may completely dominate, and the characterizations suffer. That is not the case in this book. The reader will care about Jack from the beginning. The story is heartbreaking, chilling and real. You'll stay up to finish this book, and when you do, you'll look for another book by Bauer.

I’m not sure why this was long listed for booker. Easy mystery read ,

The opening chapter, when Jack's mom disappears, is heartbreaking, and it hooked me into the story right away. Unfortunately, after that it took awhile for me to get invested again. There's several POV and once they all started to converge, it got a lot more interesting.Jack was the most entertaining character, full of contradictions. I couldn't help but feel for him, he'd been let down by almost every adult around him.The ending left me a bit adrift, there was no motive revealed and I wanted to know the why.

I found this book to be a wonderful discovery--one of those "mystery" or "thriller" novels that go well beyond the genre in their treatment of plot and character (the novel centers around a fourteen-year-old boy intent on finding justice for his murdered mother). Including several remarkable coincidences, the parts of the narrative puzzle fit together seamlessly and are never forced or rushed. In contrast to the brutality of the initial crime, the novel's treatment of the young criminal is thoroughly humane, its focus being Jack's grief and his inordinate sense of responsibility. This humanity becomes the measuring-stick for other characters in the novel, especially a police detective and a next-door neighbor who befriend a boy whom the rest of the adult world has proved only too willing to ignore.

This was such a good story! I have been reading quite a few classics and the crisp modern style, the unexpected facets in the characters of the people in the story, it just grabbed me, curious, and mysterious, and sad and yet hopeful.

Slow start, but it gets better. Wish the end had resolved a few more issues. Did Adam While die? Was the case of Eileen Bright get closed? Did Jack get home all right, turn the knife over to police, etc?