I had never heard of R.J.Ellory before and I only chose to buy this book as part of a Richard and Judy book club deal. But I was pleasantly surprised when I started reading it and found that it was hard to put it down. It is set in a small southern town in America at the start of world war 2 and up to sometime during the vietnam war (late 60's I think). The narrator is a man named Joseph Vaughan who lives with his mum in Augusta Falls, his Dad having died when he was young. The story follows him as he grows up and is slowly involved with the murders of young girls in his town and other counties close by (although he doesn't actually kill them). After his girlfriend Alex dies when he is still barely an adult he ends up moving to New York to better his life and ends up eventually meeting another girl who he ends up going to prison for having been falsely accused of her murder. When he is released after 13 years in the 60's he decides to go back to Augusta Falls in search of the Sherriff to try and solve the murder cases. The penultimate moment at the end sees the death of the sherriff and possibly himself, although you don't really know for sure.
I really did like this book. I liked how after most paragraphs there was a couple of pages written from the very last moments of his life in which he finally faces the murderer. It kept bringing you back to how he was thinking. I think that the fact it goes into so much detail is really good as you feel more involved with everything and like a part of the bigger picture. I also liked the way that you never know or have any clues as to who the murderer is and yet at the end of the book in the last chapter, you just sort of know straight away.