[close] Philip Pullman is a highly acclaimed author of books for young people. His Dark Materials: Northern Lights won three awards in 1996; The Firework-Maker's Daughter won the 1996 Smarties Gold Award and Clockwork was shortlisted for the Whitbread Book of the Year 1997. The Butterfly Tattoo is an engrossing and agonising thriller. What starts out as an apparently harmless holiday job for 17-year-old Oxford 'A' level student Chris Marshall, slowly but surely turns into something quite other. Unhappy and traumatised by the break up of his parents' marriage, things start looking up for Chris when he falls in love with the beautiful, emotionally bruised Jenny. But then his boss's dangerously shady past slowly but surely starts catching up with him and before he knows it Chris has become the innocent cause of death and disaster. An ingeniously plotted, simply written and grippingly readable thriller which involves the reader in deep questions about the nature of innocence, criminality and social responsibility. --Tamsin Palmer [close]