Dressing up old books in new covers seems to be a growing ploy of  publishers’ marketing departments.

Authors’ names are emblazoned in bold type – more prominent than that used for the actual title – on redesigned covers enclosing novels written decades ago.

It is an eye-catching trick that can bamboozle avid readers into thinking one of their favourite writers has pushed out  a new oeuvre in double quick time. Hard on the heels of the one bought not all that long ago.

A pleasant surprise. Can’t wait to read it.

Another impulse buy to add to the bedside TBR pile.

It is only later that reality bites – you’ve been had.  Misled. Perhaps not deliberately deceived, but diddled at least.

As if there aren’t already enough tricksters to cope with, there are now traps for the unwary in the most respectable of places, even in the serene surroundings of our bookshops.

Which is how I stumbled upon Belinda Bauer’s beguiling Blacklands.  She is high on my list of faves,  never failing to intrigue and delight in so many different ways.

Little wonder therefore that I flashed the cashcard without a second thought; or at least without thinking how good it was to see another Bauer title so soon after the release of the madness of  the utterly delightful The Impossible Thing (see review below).

Only later did one of the laudatory quotes on the back cover of Blacklands catch my eye and spark a query. This was Val McDermid’s comment that, ‘This is a debut that hits the ground running.’

A debut? What was she on about?

True enough. The small print of the publisher’s imprint stated it was first published in the UK way back in 2010.  And here we are in 2025, fifteen years later and revelling in the pleasures of what is being prominently displayed among all the latest and truly new releases.

Blacklands turned out to be the book that brought author Bauer to the widespread attention of those who love their crime fiction to be slightly more bizarre than the usual twists and turns, shocks and surprises of the genre.

Definitely a debut,  as McDermid precisely described  it.

And, as is often the case with Bauer,  it provides many a laugh out loud moment to lighten the grim and grisly goings on.  Plus many pinpointedly accurate descriptive passages, tight and terse,  and with not a word wasted. Such vivid word pictures of the mundane and ordinary.

The story centres on eleven-year-old Steven whose uncle, Billy, disappeared two hundred metres from his home on the edge of Exmoor, never to be seen again.

Steven mourns for Billy, who was about his own age when he was believed to have been snatched, killed and buried by serial killer Arnold Avery. Although Avery had been  convicted and jailed for the deaths of several others of Billy’s age he had never admitted to killing Billy or revealed the location of his body.

Steven is hit hard by his uncle’s absence. He does more than mourn his loss and  let his memories of Billy eventually fade away. Instead, he begins a relentless secretive search for his uncle’s body.

He acquires an old spade and an Ordnance Survey map of the moor which he divides into precise  sectors.

Whenever he can he sneaks away from the watchful eyes of his downtrodden mother – widowed when her husband died in a road accident – and his nosey parker nan.

He treks on to the moor in all weathers and turns over another patch of turf . One day he will find Billy’s body.

It is a daunting task that he suspects will never achieve the hoped-for result.  More direct action is needed.

As a result, killer Avery is surprised  by a rare mail delivery. It is a brief handwritten note asking for help in finding WP – the initials of one of his victims.

And so begins an unsettling and chilling relationship as Avery teases Steven with droplets of information and the boy delves ever deeper into the evil and twisty mind of killers such as Avery.

To Avery it is at first a diversion to the longeurs and attacks (verbal and physical) suffered during his incarceration. But to Steven it is an all-consuming passion – a spasmodic ray of hope in his quest to unearth Billy’s body.

Each has to rely on devious ploys to continue the torturous relationship. Detection would be ruinous. Disruptions create agonising delays. Others flit in and out of their “game” as unwitting and unwanted players who cause spine-tingling havoc.

Billy senses Avery’s mood is changing; no longer as laid back and playful as in his first response. Avery is increasingly disturbed by Billy’s dogged ability to read between the lines and plots his escape from prison.  Billy has to be stopped, and he knows only one way of doing this.

True to the formula that lifts her books high above the ruck, Bauer uses the mishaps, stumbles and misplaced good intentions of daily life to set Billy and Avery hurtling along a nail-bitingly tense trail of black humour.  It’s a path full of frights and fun. We are carried along breathless with laughter and trembling with fear.

Ordinary people,  barely equiped to cope with the mundaneness of daily life, struggle to cope with the evil among them. And the forces of law and order are not much better, bumbling and stumbling to save the day.

It is made all the scarier by the precision of Bauer’s prose in describing the trivial and commonplace. All so vividly real and therefore made all the scarier. It is a wonderful start to the succession of thrillers that has followed.

Egged on to criminal deeds

One of which is  The Impossible Thing in which Bauer again uses the offbeat and weird as a setting for a mystery of murky deeds.

This time she delves into the dark and quirky world  of collectors of bird eggs. Not just any old eggs but precisely those purloined from guillemot nests on the cliffs along the Yorkshire coast.

On the face of it, such a simple tale of community rivalry and petty jealousies.  But bubbling along not far below the surface are greed and ambition which will stop at nothing, not even murder.

Again, Bauer skilfully paints a brilliant word picture of ordinary folk battling along with their humdrum lives. This time switching between the present day and an impoverished rural community in the 1920s.

Young children, the smaller the better, are valued for their ability to scramble down the cliffs and squeeze into nesting places. But the rewards go not to the famiies of these death defying youngsters but to the gangs and landed gentry  viciously  fighting over each year’s harvest of eggs.

And not a thought is given to the guillemots deprived of hoped-for chicks until they return on their annual migration a year hence..

The ultimate prize is the legendary Metland Egg, advertised as “the true eighth wonder of the world” and otherwise known as Big Blue. It is a rarity said to be produced by only one mating pair who occupy the same carefully chosen nest year upon year.

There are rarities among other collections but this is the one for which the highest price is demanded and which is shrouded in secrecy.

Rumours are rife about its ownership, its location and even it existence. And just as a deal for its purchase is close to being sealed – it is stolen.

And so we are whisked to the present day and  two young chancers  who decide a Wanted to Buy post on eBay offers a chance to make some easy money..

Their simple plot soon goes wrong. Dangerously and comically, which tends to be the Bauer USP.  She makes all manner of crime a platform for humour. Often of the blackest kind, with The Impossible Thing being one of her best.

With this saga of a famous egg – a story founded on real events – history tends to repeat itself.

The Metland Egg was bad news a century ago and it is bad news again. Skulduggery and evil surround it and all associated with it. Both back in the 1920s and in the present day.

From the threads of what starts out as a double bill of petty crimes Bauer weaves a complex trail of murder and mayhem.  Nothing goes well for all involved.  Violence is mixed with chaos. The pace is steadily ramped up,  hurtling us forward at rapid page-turning speed.

The writing sparkles, the characters are vividly described with taut prose.  It’s a helter-skelter of a ride well worth the price of admission.

Jump aboard.