Blackmoor Edward Hogan Simon & Schuster, 272pp, £11.99

Authors who start their novels by giving away the ending – which, in the case of Blackmoor, means the destruction of a former coal-mining village and of Beth Cartwright, a young albino woman who lives there – are setting themselves a formidable task. The element of surprise removed, the author must work even harder to keep readers interested.

An elegant turn of phrase helps. Hogan certainly has that, whether he is describing visible or imagined details: the bones in Beth’s fingers show through her skin “like the scaffold of a corset”, and an undiscovered coal seam under her family’s house is “a shining black stripe worth £600m”. He draws his characters with just as much care, capturing the uniquely horrible position of an outsider in an already marginalised and remote community.

But while the delivery is graceful, the sense of understated, growing menace is what really holds this book together. And surprisingly, the reason it works is that the end of the story has been set out. Or most of it has, anyway. The mine and Beth’s life collapse in on themselves, but Hogan also focuses on Beth’s son, Vincent, a decade later. And as everything else crumbles, the elements of his teenage world start to slot into place, bringing warmth to an already deeply felt novel.

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