All the Colours of the Dark - Chris Whitaker
Looking back at children growing up in a more innocent time half a century ago (how quickly things change!), it's hard not to draw comparisons, at least initially, between All the Colours of the Dark and works like Stand by Me or even Stranger Things without the dark fantasy and horror. Chris Whitaker certainly captures something of the warmth and magic of childhood around this mid-seventies period, a time when the world felt grander, was more diverse, exciting and unknown, where imagination replaced Instagram. But it's not an idealised depiction by any means, nor is it steeped in nostalgia. There is nothing innocent about what happens in the lives of a number of children growing up around this time in Monta Clare, Missouri. In fact, All the Colours of the Dark opens with hope dying. On a morning in 1975 the day that her bees went missing, 13-year-old Saint finds out that her friend Joseph 'Patch' Macauley has been stabbed, abducted and, as time passes, is now in al...