Australian author Ellie Marney’s YA thriller, None Shall Sleep, set in the US in the 80s is about serial killers and will keep you uncomfortably riveted to the end.

There are no monsters. Only people.

Teenagers Emma and Travis are engaged by the FBI Behavioural Science section to help them get a better understanding of what makes a young serial killer. They have been chosen because the young serial killers refuse to speak to adults and because they each have their own unique experiences with serial killers.

Emma was the sole survivor who escaped one serial killer and Travis’s father was murdered by another in the line of duty. Their job is to interview convicted juvenile killers, but when they are drawn into an active case targeting teenagers, everything starts to unravel.

Emma feels the fear in her chest like a raven tapping at a window. It’s too late for misgivings, though. The door is open. A large male orderly stands sentry, securing her passage to the place beyond sanity, and Emma steps inside…

The writing style in None Shall Sleep has a police procedural feel to it which makes the story easy to follow and particularly appealing if you’re a true crime buff.Marney’s writing gives the reader just enough information to set your imagination going and send a shiver up your spine, then leaves you to fill out the worst of the gory details using your vivid imagination. Emma and Travis grab the readers sympathies from the get go which adds to the tension as you worry they will fall foul of the mind games and manipulations of the serial killers and something terrible will happen to one of them. But you will have to read it to find out.