My Best Friend - Isis Author:Laura Wilson A quiet Suffolk village, 1944. Gerald Haxton, aged fourteen, lives with his parents, a solitary twin who constantly talks to his still-born twin brother, Jack. Already disturbed and lonely, Gerald is horrified to discover the body of his elder sister Monica while walking in a forest near his home. Monica has been beaten to death with a wooden... more » stake. Her young GI boyfriend is hanged for the crime. Too late, Geralds father discovers who really killed Monica. He confides to Geralds Aunt Tilly, making her promise to take the secret to her grave. Fifty years later Gerald, now nearing retirement, remains a loner. Obsessed with routine, he still regards his dead twin Jack as his only true friend. He works in a TV prop-hire company in London, and the nature of his job surrounded by artefacts from the past means that he is constantly reminded of it and, by extension, of his sisters death. In an attempt to alleviate his solitude, Gerald takes to following Mel, the twelve-year-old daughter of a work colleague, Jo. Mel bears a striking resemblance to Monica. A few days later, Mel disappears Narrated by Gerald, Aunt Tilly and Jo, this novel uses the cunning trickle effect that worked so brilliantly in A LITTLE DEATH. Once again Wilson gets under the skin of her narrators, and weaves pathos and terror to create another haunting tragedy of damaged and distorted lives (Val McDermid)« less