Snap, the eighth novel by British author Belinda Bauer, tells the story of eleven-year-old Jack, whose pregnant mother leaves him to look after his two little sisters one day – and never comes back.

Determined that he and his sisters won’t be taken into care, Jack takes matters into his own hands, and ends up being recruited by the police to help them solve a devilishly complicated mystery. Val McDermid, one of the UK’s greatest living crime writers, has described Snap as “the best crime novel I’ve read in a very long time”.

Bauer, who lives in Wales, was a journalist and BAFTA-winning screenwriter before she transitioned into writing novels. (Her first book, Badlands, won the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger award for the best crime novel of 2010.)

“A book can start with a whole world that interests me or a throwaway remark,” she said in 2015. “Either way there’s got to be a hook that gets lodged in my psyche and just won’t let go, and there has to be a character engaging enough to draw the reader in.”

These 7 brilliant women have been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize