The Chalk Man Is a Chilling Old-School Thriller

In the grand tradition of Stephen King, C.J. Tudor’s devious debut thriller, The Chalk Man skillfully combines a realistic approach to characters and setting with an ominous, slow-boil sense of dread. The end result is a story that feels like a supernatural thriller even while the plot remains firmly rooted in a realistic universe. It’s a great trick, and gives Tudor’s story a pounding heart that injects rising tension onto every page.
An English King
One of the best aspects of King’s writing is how he crafts characters who feel like people you might meet on the street and places you can imagine visiting, then finds dark depths within them. Tudor has the same skill, making the small English town of Anderbury feel very real, filled with people who seem wholly genuine. The fact that her story uses a classic King template—children who experience a terrifying adventure while navigating the trials of adolescence, then return to the mystery as troubled adults—only reinforces this feeling. That isn’t to say Tudor is mimicking King; she’s got her own voice and sensibility. She tells a dark, shocking story that involves rape, bullying, gruesome murder, and mental instability, and manages to make you care about the characters through her clear affection for them, and for the place they inhabit.
The Waltzer Girl
The Chalk Man is told from the point of view of Eddie Adams, nick-named Eddie Munster by his gang of friends—fat, jocular Gavin, braces-afflicted Metal Mickey, stalwart Hoppo, and flame-haired girl Nicky, daughter of the humorless local vicar. In 1986, they’re kids tooling around Anderbury on their bikes. In 2016, Eddie is a teacher at the local school, reflecting on the events of thirty years before. The story flips back and forth between the two timelines, slowly revealing its secrets.
In 1986, Eddie is involved in a fairground accident in which a beautiful local girl, Elisa, is disfigured when a ride called the Waltzer malfunctions. A newly-arrived teacher, Mr. Halloran (an albino) grabs Eddie, and together they save Elisa’s life, forging a connection between them. Over the next few months, a series of events leave the Waltzer Girl (as Eddie thinks of Elisa) dead, her dismembered body in the nearby woods, and her head missing, Halloran is accused of her murder, and several other lives  are destroyed or changed forever. These events are all marked by the presence of the chalk symbols the gang uses as a secret code between themselves.
The Chalk Man
The chalk symbols are a laugh for the kids; they assign each other a color, and use a simple code to communicate. Coincidentally, Mr. Halloran is nick-named the Chalk Man by the kids at school. When the chalk symbols are turned against the kids, they seem to take on a power beyond the kids’ understanding—mocking them, leading them, threatening them. And they return, 30 years later, in the form of ominous letters mailed to each member of the group, just as Mickey returns to town, claiming to know who really killed the Waltzer Girl. The subversion of an innocent childhood game that leads to murder and violence soaks the story in dread.
The Unreliable
Tudor uses the trick of the unreliable narrator with skill and subtlety. The mystery of who committed the murder, and why, takes on a sheen of the supernatural when ghosts plague Eddie—lucid dreams that turn malevolent as violence and betrayal in 2016 seems to parallel the events of 1986, tying the kids together, though they’ve become strangers in adulthood. Slowly, many of the tragedies that beset them throughout their lives are shown to be connected. It all leads up to the final, crucial pages, which shift our understanding of everything that came before in just a few paragraphs, leaving the reader unsettled and disturbed—like the best thrillers always do.