Fictional crime provides welcome relief from real-life virus tragedy
The latest international thrillers offer a glimpse into a world without Covid-19, writes Eilis O’Hanlon
THERE seems to be a new trend for authors to set their novels at the time of the book’s publication, presumably so that the narrative feel fresh and up to date. That does present problems if events in real life conspire to overtake those in the fictional present.
Harlan Coben’s new novel The Boy From The Woods (Century, €15.99) begins on April 23, 2020, by which point, in the real world, 44,000 Americans had already died of the coronavirus; but of course there’s no mention of Covid-19 in the book, because it was written long before anyone had heard of the virus.
It feels strange to read a story supposedly happening in the hereand-now in which normal life is continuing without interruption; though this is a thriller, so the words “normal life” might be overstating it.
Wilde was found as a child living in the woods in New Jersey. Hence the name. A former soldier turned security expert, he now makes a living “off the grid” helping people when they need it. When two teenagers go missing, and a finger turns up in the mail, he’s drafted in to track them down before it’s too late. The Boy From The Woods is replete with Coben’s trademark twists and humour, and, like his earlier novel
The Stranger, this one is also being adapted as a series for Netflix.
In his maverick, itinerant, secretive way of life, Wilde bears something of a resemblance to the central character in The Goodbye
Man (Harper Collins, €12.74), the new novel from Jeffery Deaver, and both are not unalike the hero of Lee Child’s iconic Jack Reacher series.
Colter Shaw (yes, that really is his name) is loosely described as a “professional reward seeker” who is “hardwired to save people from disaster”. This time he’s on the hunt for two young men wanted for questioning about a hate crime.
The book begins as Colter is out for what would now count officially as a non-essential drive in a remote part of Washington State when a rock is deliberately rolled on to the road ahead of him. Moments later, clambering from his wrecked vehicle, he’s also shot at. The story then goes back six hours to explain how he got into that predicament, before continuing forward as he gets involved in an amateur probe into a sinister cult called The Foundation, led by a man known as Master Eli.
It’s billed as an “action thriller” to distinguish it from the more fiendishly intricate Lincoln Rhyme mysteries for which Deaver is best known. Colter doesn’t have the charisma of Jack Reacher, but Deaver is a master at plotting and pace and draws readers in from the very first sentence, and it’s almost comforting to be reminded of a time when people could still walk those mean streets freely, meeting strangers, visiting diners. Did such a world really exist just a few months ago?
Like Jeffery Deaver, Michael Connelly is also a former journalist, and his own new novel, Fair
Warning, (Orion, £14.99), is the third centred on reporter Jack McEvoy, first introduced in 1996’s The Poet, still one of his best books. McEvoy now works for a non-profit news group which shares its name with the novel’s title. Fair Warning happens to be a real organisation, on whose board Connelly himself sits, and the proliferation of fake news is a theme running through its pages.
McEvoy becomes a suspect in the murder of a woman with whom he had a one-night stand, and he has to clear his name whilst racing to solve a series of murders by a killer who seems to use his victim’s own personal data against them.
Australian author BM Carroll’s debut novel, Who We Were (Viper, €10.06), is also set in a Covid-free 2020, as schoolmates from the class of 2000 at Macquarie High prepare to celebrate their 20-year reunion, and one of the group hatches other plans. Remembering the “hateful faces” and “fake innocence” of those old friends, that anonymous character begins playing mind games with the invitees, promising: “Their shallow lives will be blown apart. And they’ll be sorry”.
Carroll’s prose style may be functional rather than dazzling, but Who We Were is a genuine pageturner, and it never lags or loses the reader’s interest. It features a great cast of characters, all of whom feel entirely believable, from Annabel, the school captain who was going to be a marine biologist before she got pregnant at school and settled into life as a stay-at-home mum, to Luke, who dreamed of being a Broadway star after playing Danny in the school production of Grease, but who’s perfectly happy with his life now as an air steward in London.
Viper is the new crime imprint of independent publisher Serpent’s Tail, and it has struck a real winner with this book, which encourages readers to reconsider their own time at school, and what they might do differently if they had the chance to go back, and, more importantly, who they may have annoyed enough to make them want revenge.
Romy Hausmann’s Dear Child (Quercus, €11.99) is another debut novel, this time translated from German, but one in which the beautifully constructed sentences are as much of a draw as the plot.
It concerns Lena, who’s being held prisoner in a windowless house in the woods by a man who, “like God”, controls her world. The book begins, as the publicity puts it, where most crime books end, as she escapes to safety; but is she really the girl who vanished 13 years ago? The story is told from multiple viewpoints, which gives a satisfying complexity to what might otherwise be a lurid exercise in voyeurism. Hausmann has produced an intelligent and original book with unsettling echoes of real life events, as readers familiar with the ordeal of Natascha Kampusch may remember.
Finally, out this very day is
The Darkling Halls Of Ivy (LB Productions, €22.36, though it’s just €7.21 on Kindle), a collection of 18 mystery stories edited by the aforementioned LB, veteran American author Lawrence Block.
Contributors include Ian Rankin, David Morrell and Owen King, and the tales are all set in the world of academia, where jealous rivalries readily spill over deliciously into murder in fiction. Short stories are the perfect antidote for those who’ve struggled with long books during lockdown, and the themes of plagiarism and sexual misconduct on campus have never been timelier.