THE Reading room

Sci-fi thriller

The Mother Fault

by Kate Mildenhall, Simon & Schuster

There’s a grizzly scene in when Heidi, the friend of protagonist Mim, is trying to surgically remove tracing implants from the arms of her friend and two children. It involves anaesthetic, a scalpel and digging around in flesh and veins for the tiny “silver sliver” that keeps our now on-the-run family on the radar of ‘The Department’. It’s a messy task, and after mopping blood and gluing together wounds, Heidi secretes the chips in some rats to put Big Brother off the scent. These chips are both