A small town is just a jail with no bars. Trapped, always watched, always watching, and the question is: are you the jailer, or the inmate?

In Abernathy, Claire Patel-Campbell’s debut novel, you’re dropped into Small Town America: which could be small-town England; small-town anywhere. You feel the frost in your bones, your breath freezes, and you shiver with dread. You become one with the residents: walk the same streets, drink the same bad coffee, and feel as claustrophobic, or as powerful, as one can in a tiny town with secrets.

It all starts with a body, frozen in the snow. Who she is, and why she came to be there, will be the plucked thread that may cause the whole town to unravel.

I fell into the story and the characters: there is a swiftly developing complexity and a feel of disaster that is compelling. There is that sense of anarchy about it which I think is one of the markers of Americanness. Always odd that a country so dominated by legalities should feel so lawless.

Alan Smith, author of Her Majesty’s Philosophers