Teddy Angstrom’s world is in freefall. Her father has just killed himself by driving off a bridge on the tenth anniversary of her sister Angie’s disappearance. To make matters worse, she discovers he’s been embroiled for years in online chat communities where wild conspiracies abound about what happened to Angie on the night she vanished. This swamp of fake news and trolling brings amateur sleuth Mickey into Teddy’s orbit; it also prompts increasingly destructive behaviour in Teddy’s work life as a teacher and in her personal life too, where she embarks on a turbulent on/off relationship with the older Bill, her family’s former gardener.

Kate Brody keeps the mystery elements fizzing along nicely throughout, without sacrificing characterisation. Teddy is a superb creation, independent yet vulnerable, her unravelling entirely believable. The author’s gritty, unsparing prose is propulsive, with her depictions of sex particularly visceral and unsentimental.  

It all adds up to a dark, absorbing evocation of grief, loss and strained familial ties, painfully capturing how damaging the search for answers can be on the survivors of tragedy. A page-turner in the best sense, the most startling aspect of this brilliantly accomplished novel is that it’s Brody’s debut outing.

Kate Brody: Rabbit Hole is published by Bloomsbury on Thursday 18 January.