Joe befriends the art teacher, Beth Scattergood, and becomes aware that little has changed at the school and in a community harbouring dark deeds.

This story is told exclusively through the POV of a male protagonist and I am astonished at how competently Tudor was able to cultivate this character as if she had lived and breathed in his shoes. Arnhill, once a mining town and now little else but a cordoned off pit, doesn’t have much left to offer. The whole money thing is one part of the story but then there is the mystery of Joe's little sister, who went missing, when she was eight.

It seems easier to turn a plot one way or another than to help us understand how people can hide their inner selves. Joe is morally gray character , one moment I see his soft side for his sister and the next he gives me chills. It’s not a very long book, yet somehow I still felt as if it either needed to be shorter or fleshed out more. In the present time there was also a boy that died at his mother's hand, just before she committed suicide. The new spine-tingling, sinister thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Chalk Man.

But Joe Thorne, long estranged from his childhood village does, and it has something to do with the pit near the disused mines. Tudor once again skirts the line between horror and thriller in this sophomore book, similar genre-wise to her breakout debut, The Chalk Man (a MUST read! Joe wasn't a particularly likeable character, but he brought a lot to the table - mysterious with a dark past, a twisted sense of humor, and a fierce determination to uncover some wrongs.I grew irritable and distracted at the constant mentions of "Little Miss Scary", the autistic bartender whom our protagonist felt relieved when she was substituted for the old, bald, white fat guy.

I think Joe's make up was a bit over the top for me; instead of choosing a few unsavory characteristics to portray his flaws, we get numerous accounts of bigotry and prejudice in the form of racism, ablism, homophobia, etc. I have no idea what is the situation when it comes to film rights and this particular novel, but I am sure that it will happen! It only took me a few chapters to start comparing Tudor's writing style to that of Stephen King, and I mean that in the most flattering of ways. I could follow the gambling debt part of the story just fine but the horror story part of the book lost me. Unfortunately for me, I was a little let down by “The Hiding Place” - parts of it felt familiar and very similar to “The Chalk Man” (though the pacing of that was faster), in addition, for a good 75% of this book, very little actually happened and when it did it was quite predictable.Now he has faked his way into a teaching job in the local high school and is renting the woman’s cold, ominous cottage.

I feel another round of editing to take away some of the choppy presentation might improve the overall quality as well. The town is as much a character as any of the people and Tudor does an excellent job of portraying that small town, claustrophobic, cloying nature. He's presented as an underdog from the very beginning, even though once he hits his teenage years he joins a crowd of bullies and participates in the very behavior that he initially was plagued by.When she showed up again, 48 hours later, it was obvious to Joe that there was something wrong with his sister. Overall, this was an enjoyable book, but I wanted it to be even darker, creepier and with more dread and suspense. I presume the author is allowing the reader to make their mind up about the role of the unnatural versus the imagination in this novel. J. Tudor has once again crafted an extraordinary novel that brilliantly blends harrowing psychological suspense, a devilishly puzzling mystery, and enough shocks and thrills to satisfy even the most seasoned reader.