Jawbone Lake

From the author of Electricity and Forgetting Zoë, comes a thought-provoking, beautifully written and taut thriller.

Ravenstor, the Peak District. The early hours of New Year’s Day. A young woman stands on the shore of a frozen lake and watches a Land Rover crash off a bridge and through the ice. Two hundred miles away, a young man is woken by a devastating telephone call. The accident, and what it brings to the surface, will change both of their lives forever.

The driver of the Land Rover was CJ Arms, a successful local businessman and pillar of the small community. The young man is his son, Joe, who returns from London to comfort his mother and to search for clues as to the causes of the crash. What he finds will take him from the desolate tors of the Peaks to the foothills of southern Spain, and to a group of ex-pats from CJ’s past with many secrets to hide.

The woman on the lakeshore is Rabbit, a factory-worker struggling to recover from the sudden death of her son. Pursued by an unknown figure, Rabbit is spun from a cycle of grief and longing into one of fear. Seeking shelter at work, Rabbit finds that she can’t hide for long. What Rabbit saw that night will draw her, and Joe, towards a shocking act of violence.

Jawbone Lake is both a heart-stopping literary thriller, and a moving meditation on family, generational divide and the dangers of living a double life. Alive with the lyrical evocation of landscape that is Robinson’s forte, it is an astonishing new work of fiction from one of our finest writers.

Ray Robinson, an award-winning short-story writer, novelist and screenwriter, first won attention in 2006 with his debut novel,Electricity, which was shortlisted for both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Authors’ Club First Novel Award. The film adaptation of Electricity, starring Agyness Deyn, will be released in 2014. Robinson’s other novels are The Man Without(2008) and Forgetting Zoë (2010). Forgetting Zoë was selected for the inaugural Fiction Uncovered promotion and was the Observer’s Thriller of the Month. Robinson was hailed as ‘among the most impressive voices of Britain’s younger generation’ by the Irish Times. He is a post-graduate of Lancaster University, where he was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing in 2006, and is a Literary Mentor and Reader for the Literary Consultancy. He has appeared at literary festivals around the world, including La Feria International del Libro de Guadalajara, Mexico, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.