Stone Bruises - Simon Beckett

''Somebody!'' I half-sob and then, more quietly, ''Please.'' The words seem absorbed by the afternoon heat, lost amongst the trees. In their aftermath, the silence descends again. I know then that I’m not going anywhere...Sean is on the run. We don''t know why and we don''t know from whom, but we do know he''s abandoned his battered, blood-stained car in the middle of an isolated part of rural France at the height of a sweltering summer. Desperate to avoid the police, he takes to the parched fields and country lanes but his leg is caught in a vicious animal trap. Near unconscious from pain and loss of blood, he is freed and taken in by two women - daughters of the owner of a rundown local farm with its ramshackle barn, blighted vineyard and the brooding lake. And it''s then that Sean''s problems really start... This nail-shredder of a thriller - like the fiction of Nicci French or Gillian Flynn - holds you from the beginning, tightening its grip as the story unfurls and shocks you with its final twist.