The action starts early in the morning of August 12th, 1984. Thirteen-year-old Christopher Stewart has been missing for one hour, vanishing close from home whilst on his weekend paper-run. The police are scratching their heads and there are no obvious suspects. Whilst the clock ticks the novel cleverly morphs into a convincing family drama which is played out on several fronts, interestingly, never from the perspective of Christopher’s parents. The ripple effect of the disappearance touches all three main characters and their secrets, or potential involvement, are revealed at a pace which keeps readers on their toes.

Sammy Cox is the youngest of the three protagonists The Monsters We Make is told through and on the morning of the disappearance the boy is running home, sweating, and has pissed himself through stress and fear. He is overweight, has few friends, anger issues and other problems his overworked hairdresser mother is either too busy to help with or unaware of. The author depicts a believable working-class family struggling to pay the rent. Twelve-year-old Sammy’s story is drip-fed to the reader and it is a harrowing and believable account of how keeping secrets can lead to places of overwhelming darkness, particularly for children. Combined, fear and silence are barriers which are hard to break through and Kali White convincingly gets into the head of an isolated and troubled boy.

When the action moves to Sammy’s elder sister Crystal, the complex and involving story is told from a fresh perspective and spreads the tension into new directions. Although the seventeen-year-old is aware her little brother is unhappy and is shocked by the vanishing, she also sees it as an opportunity; she dreams of being a journalist and believes her own investigation could result in an article which she could enter in a college scholarship competition. Crystal is very intelligent and makes connections with the earlier unsolved disappearance from the neighbouring town and begins to dig into old newspaper clippings. Crystal’s mother is short of money and does not support this college dream, causing friction in the household, with her absent father also out of the picture. I really liked Crystal, a working-class girl trying to break free of her roots, but who has a great heart and plays a big part carrying the narrative forward.

The third plotline follows Sergeant Dale Goodnick, who is just about to clock out after completing his night shift when the case drops; this is made worse for Dale, as he was involved in the earlier unsolved snatching. As the case develops, Dale struggles to confront his own demons, deal with his marriage problems, the son he fails to connect and conflicts with police colleagues, which results in cracks in the investigation.

Combined, the three narratives build towards an unpredictable chain of events which touch these characters in unexpected but very believable ways. From a reader’s point of view, it is interesting to follow a forty-year-old case based on an authentic police investigation and at certain points you may well wonder what they might do differently now with all the advances in technology and profiling. The Netflix TV show Mindhunters shows how these advances came around, but in this story the author implies that the police were slow in realising what they were up against.

Convincingly set to the backdrop of the 1984 Olympics and the iconic race between Zola Budd and Mary Decker, The Monsters We Make is an excellent read which should appeal to both horror and thriller fans. My only gripe is that there are not enough potential suspects. I realise this is not the type of thriller to revel in a ‘twist’ ending, but it is telegraphed slightly, with a weak red herring thrown into the mix. However, I will give Kali White a pass on this, as it’s tough to create a villain for a murder that was never solved. Highly recommended.