Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay

The state of New England is in lockdown, a virulent new strain of plague having swept the land. Hospitals can’t cope and society is teetering on collapse. Amidst all this carnage, a pregnant woman, Natalie, is bitten and her husband killed. Natalie flees her house and calls her closest friend, English-born paediatrician Ramola Sherman. So begins a road trip across the pandemic inflicted landscape.

Survivor song is billed as both a pandemic novel and the author’s take on the zombie genre. The rabies virus in this book is virulent, affecting people within hours. Then becoming delusional and aggressive, the victims act like zombies from the movies. 

From my experience readers are torn at the moment when it comes to reading pandemic-set fiction. Some are shunning it, wanting escapism from the Covid-19 lockdowns of reality. Others are embracing it. There’s clearly still a market, with Contagion being one of the most-watched films on Netflix and a number of such titles flying from the bookshelves. Personally, I have to admit to being in the former camp and so was a little wary of reading this. But Paul Tremblay is an author who I’ve heard much about and I’ve been reading quite a bit of horror recently, so I dived in.

I have to say that I’m glad I did, because this is a brilliant book, possibly my book of the year so far. In part it’s because it’s not a pandemic novel as such and it’s not really a book about zombies. Both these elements are there of course, but really this is a book about friendship. Two women, who are close friends, who have to navigate the aftermath of a disastrous event.

There are touches of social commentary: a President ill-suited to confronting the crisis and unwilling to take control; the peddlers of conspiracy theory and the racism, xenophobia and militias they stoke; two young teenagers who view everything through the prism of video games and Hollywood movies. It all works well, but at heart, this is a simple tale of two friends' reliance on each other and their attempts to get through in one piece. It’s in its telling of this simple truth which makes this book excel.

Horror fiction is having a bit of a resurgence at the moment and Paul Tremblay is one of the new breed of authors leading the charge. Survivor Song is the first novel by him that I’ve read, but on the basis of this, I’ve already bought one of his earlier titles, The Cabin at the End of the Woods. His publisher, Titan Books, is on a run too. Not only do they publish Tremblay, but they also publish Tim Lebbon, who’s novel Eden was excellent, and I’m looking forward to The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones.

Survivor Song is truly an excellent novel and a great addition to the Titan Books canon. I can't recommend this book enough.

5 out of 5 stars

The Holdout by Graham Moore

After a teenage girl, Jessica Silver goes missing, it isn’t long before her teacher, Bobby Nock, is accused of her murder. He’s brought to trial and the evidence appears damning: The two were having a relationship with inappropriate messages exchanged between them; her DNA is found on both the passenger seat and in the boot of his car, and he lied as to his whereabouts on the night of her disappearance. 

It isn’t long before he’s brought to trial and a jury is sworn in. During the trial, two jurors begin a relationship, defying the rules against such a thing.  Maya Seale is an idealistic young woman while Rick Leonard is working on a PhD in urban planning. They are falling in love. Until that is, it comes to the deliberation. For then they discover they’re on opposing sides. Everyone agrees that Bobby Nock is guilty, except for Maya who believes there’s reasonable doubt. As the holdout on the jury, she argues her case and slowly exhausts everyone to come over to her side. It’s the right thing to do perhaps, but a Pyrrhic victory as far as her personal life is concerned, for it destroys her relationship with Rick.

Years later Maya is a successful lawyer, while Rick has spent his years trying to prove that Bobby Nock was guilty and that Maya made a terrible mistake. He approaches her outside of court saying that a documentary team wishes to reenact the trial and that he has new evidence that will prove Nock’s guilt once and for all. She reluctantly takes part and one of the jurors is murdered, Maya becoming the prime suspect.

This novel is told in intervening timelines, the original trial of Bobby Nock and the arguments and deliberations in the jury room, and the present day where Maya is trying to prove her innocence, something that forces her to reinvestigate the original case. It’s all handled with aplomb and self-assurance. But personally, this book just didn’t come alive for me. It’s become something of a sensation, with a Netflix series adaptation in the works, but for me, it just lacked a certain magic.

As a British reader, what I did find interesting were the differences between US law and procedure (in this case that of the state of California) and the UK. The fallout of the case is such, with Bobby Nock having been tried in the court of public opinion, that the not guilty verdict has real ramifications for the jurors. This is something that doesn’t happen in the UK, as contempt of court legislation means that there are reporting restrictions on what can be reported during a trial. Furthermore, it is illegal to report the goings-on and deliberations that take place within juries in the UK. So members of UK juries are never subjected to this kind of scrutiny and criticism.

Another striking difference was the treatment of sex offenders. Apparently, in California, someone on the sex offenders register has to literally knock on all the doors in the neighbourhood to announce his or her presence when they move into an area. What this leads to is sex offenders being ostracised and banished from society and setting up their own little communities. There are trailers parks consisting entirely of sex offenders. Now, sex offenders are not a sympathetic constituency, and I’m not suggesting that people should feel sorry for them. That said, you don’t need to be the caricature of a bleeding heart liberal to see this as akin to something from the middle ages, and imagine that it does more harm than good. Surely these people need to be treated and monitored, rather than left to their own devices in makeshift ghettoes?

These elements, fascinating though they may be to a British reader, make up just a small fraction of the book, and the novel is in the main a legal thriller akin to something that John Grisham might write. In my opinion, it’s a good book, but not great, though if you’re a fan of the genre you might like it more than I did.

3 out of 5 stars

  

Ride or Die by Khurrum Rahman

This is the third outing for Jay Qassim, the protagonist of Khurrum Rahman’s excellent spy thriller series. I’ve read and reviewed both of the previous books and was very keen to read this and see how poor Jay is getting on.

Ride or Die picks up where book two, Homegrown Hero, left off. Imran Siddiqui, one-time sleeper terrorist and a man who was tasked to kill Jay and failed to do so, lives with the consequences: his family murdered in a suicide bombing revenge attack. Jay Qassim for his part has been dropped by MI5 once more. Always the unwitting agent, they now have no further use for him. There’s tension between the two because Imran blames Jay for the death of his family. If only he had obeyed his orders and killed Jay, his family would still be alive. Jay for his part feels overwhelmed by guilt.

These two are thrown together once more when they learn that Jay’s father, the leader of a global jihadi group, might still be alive. Jay is conflicted. He hates what his father did, the terrorism that he instigated, but the man's still his dad. Imran blames Jay’s father most of all for the death of his family, it was he after all who gave the orders. The two are tasked to go to Pakistan/Afghanistan to track down Jay’s father, but they both have conflicting and unspoken intentions for what to do when they get there. And what of MI5? And what of the new splinter group, more virulent than that which Jay’s father led?’

Ride or Die is a slight departure for Rahman in that his previous two books have focused a lot more on Jay's relationship with MI5. He was bullied to a great extent into becoming a source for the Security Service and this portrayal, and the tensions between on the one hand MI5 doing valuable work in stopping terrorism, and on the other, their manipulation and coercion of young Muslims in order to achieve this, was very well portrayed. In this book, MI5 is still on the scene, but Jay is divorced from it to a greater extent because he’s in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and he has his own motivations for being there.

But the fact that the author has taken a slightly different path for this novel is no bad thing and Ride or Die remains a great addition to the series. Neither has the author lost his eye for critical representation of the intelligence agencies and Western foreign policy. Without lapsing into polemic, neither gets off lightly in this novel. While no excuses are made for the jihadis and their violence, this novel, like its predecessors, continues to be a corrective to some of the more tub-thumping examples of the spy thriller genre.

Finally, I need to say something about the humour in this title. In each of my reviews for Rahman’s novels, I’ve tended to focus on the more serious elements and neglected to stress how these are also great fun to read. Jay is his usual brash and bolshy self, always ready with a quip and a great turn of phrase. These books are a joy to read but have a heart and a cerebral core too.

As always with Rahman, Ride or Die is highly recommended, and I look forward to the next instalment in the series.

 4 out of 5 stars 

The Englishman by David Gilman

When Jeremy Carter, a 49-year-old banker is ambushed in his car, his driver murdered by men with assault rifles in an ambush in London, his boss at MI6 (who he once officially worked for, and still does unofficially) wants someone off-the-books to help him investigate. Enter Dan Raglan, the Englishman of the title, a former French Foreign Legionnaire and a man who has worked for both French and British intelligence since. Raglan sets about investigating, his familial relationship with Carter spurring him on. Soon, he finds himself up to his ears in international intrigue and espionage.  

I shan’t give too much away about the plot, but this is a good, solid, high-octane spy thriller. The blurb on the back gives it away that at some point Raglan will need to sneak into a penal colony deep in the snowy wastes of Siberia, a near-impossible mission. But this happens towards the end of the book, and in actual fact, I found the body of the plot, which occurs in London, far more compelling.

This a novel that fits into that muscular genre of action/espionage, more Lee Child, Vince Flynn, or Stephen Leather than John Le Carre. There’s enough here to make it stand out from the crowd, it’s well-plotted and the characterisation is good, but I did find the odd irritating flourish of cliché. Am I the only one who finds the femme fatale a little tiresome? Why does the action hero have to fall into bed with a female colleague? Is this just a convention that thriller readers on the whole expect, and are my complaints just me being a little stuffy?

That said, this is a small flaw - and as mentioned, it might be just me who sees it as such - in an otherwise well crafted and enjoyable novel. One thing I did like about the novel, is that people you don’t expect to die, do. This is something that Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones excelled at and elevated them above the competition: never knowing whether a cherished character might get killed does wonders for the tension. I won't give anything away, but there are a couple of times in this novel when a character who you think won't end up on a mortuary slab, does, in fact, do so. The author is certainly not scared to kill his darlings, always a good thing with a thriller writer.

The Englishman holds its own in a crowded field and I certainly hope that there’s a sequel. The characters left standing at the end could certainly carry one.

4 out of 5 stars

Eden by Tim Lebbon

With climate change kicking in with a vengeance, sea levels rising, virgin forest such as the Amazon all but destroyed, great islands of plastic refuse floating in the oceans and countless species on the brink of extinction, humanity must take drastic action. So it is that global consent is sought and obtained to set aside Virgin Zones, areas of the planet given back to nature where people are banished from stepping foot. These zones are guarded by an international force of ex-soldiers and mercenaries and while many cases of abuse occur, the world can’t but persevere with the project. 

As with the Chernobyl exclusion zone after the disaster of 1986, the Virgin Zones flourish without people, nature returning ascendant. Again, like Chernobyl, while people aren’t supposed to enter them, they do. It isn't long before a small underground develops of extreme adventurers willing to risk the armed guards to explore inside.

Eden is the oldest of the zones and it is also the wildest. When Dylan leads his tight-knit team of adrenalin seekers, that includes his daughter, Jenn, into the zone, they think that they’re up to the challenge. What they don’t realise is that Eden itself doesn’t want them.

This is an eco-horror with a slight supernatural bent. At one point a character mentions a piece of Jewish folklore. All of creation had been completed, except one corner. God began to create it, but left it unfinished, saying, “Whoever declares himself to be God, let him come and finish this corner, and then all shall know he is a god.” There, in that unfinished corner, demons, winds, earthquakes, and evil spirits dwell. It’s a myth that sums up Eden for where people once did live in the Virgin Zone since it’s abandonment something has emerged and it’s not entirely clear what it is or where it came from. 

I won’t give away much more of the plot, but this is an excellent and very current novel of our times. With people increasingly aware of the impact that we are having on the environment and the climate crisis, there is a sense, rightly or wrongly, that the ecosystem is turning against us. 

While I mainly read crime fiction, I’ve always read a bit of horror, but since coronavirus and lockdown, I’ve started to turn to the genre more and more. I’m not sure why this is, but there is a horror resurgence at the moment, though whether this just coincidentally coincides with Covid-19, I can’t say. Either way, this is my first Tim Lebbon novel, but it will definitely not be my last. 

Creepy and scary, this is an excellent read.

5 out of 5 stars

Sword by Bogdan Teodorescu

A serial killer is roaming Romania, cutting his victims’ throats with a sword. All his victims have two things in common: they’re from the much-maligned Roma community, an ethnic group that has suffered much prejudice and continues to do so, and they’re all criminals. Sword, as the press unimaginatively dub the killer, soon polarises the country, with some ethnic Romanians cheering the killer's targeting of Roma. Soon, the country’s ethnic divisions are laid bare.

This is a novel with a huge cast of characters and a huge span: the narrative stretches from Sword’s victims, through the police who are tasked with catching him, the intelligence agencies who monitor the simmering ethnic tensions and the national security situation that this endangers, politicians of all stripes who use the murders to jostle for position, and finally to the President, Prime Minister and cabinet ministers.

This is much more than a crime novel and is rather a political and social commentary, the Sword killings a catalyst through which to study the rifts that lie at the heart of Romanian society. The author is a former Romanian journalist himself and even served as Acting Minister in the nation’s Department of Public Information from  1996 to 1997. So he knows a thing or two about Romanian society and the picture that he paints is not a complimentary one. Quite the reverse, in fact. 

This book is eye-opening as to the sheer corruption that it paints. Journalists and television hosts actively seek pay-offs for portraying politicians in a good light, something that the latter are all too happy to oblige them with. If a media figure then doesn’t pull the line, the politician bitterly complains and seeks revenge. Racial tensions are stark also. While poverty and the sense that since the fall of communism the country has ground to a halt as far as progress and living standards are concerned is palpable.

This book works well on these levels but unfortunately, it tries to say too much and the narrative buckles under the weight of its cast of characters, all of whom struggle for the limelight. As for Sword him or herself? The serial killer disappears from the story for much of the book, and while on one level this doesn’t matter, the serial killings are just the spark to light the touch paper of tension, after all, one can't escape the fact that it’s precisely when the killer leaves the picture that the book starts to drift.

3 out of 5 stars

Die Alone by Simon Kernick

This is the third in Kernick’s Bone Field trilogy, coming after the titular The Bone Field and its sequel The Hanged Man. While this book could be read on its own, I would highly recommend reading the previous two titles to get the most enjoyment from it.

The series focuses on a group of powerful and corrupt men who have children and adults - mostly vulnerable and easily missed, but not always - kidnapped to order so that they may be tortured and murdered for their sadistic pleasure. The three novels trace the unravelling of this network and the efforts of two disgraced former police officers - Ray Mason and Tina Boyd (Ray is a serving officer in the first novel, and disgraced by the third) - to solve the crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice. 

Alastair Sheridan, one of those guilty of the offences is a wealthy city fund manager, and by this novel, he’s entered politics and is on the cusp of becoming Prime Minister. Cem Kalaman, the other remaining conspirator, is the head of a powerful organised crime syndicate. Sheridan, in particular, is determined to stop the investigations into him once and for all, his fellow perpetrators having been killed, the bodies of victims having been discovered, and it all reaches a crescendo in this final instalment.

Simon Kernick is a versatile crime writer and with this series, I feel that he’s moved into quite gothic territory. There’s a real dark feel to these novels and it’s not just the horrendous crimes that the criminals have committed (which are never described in gratuitous detail) but rather the intersection between powerful men and the almost satanic cult that they’re a part of, and the near invulnerability that their wealth and power bring to them. It makes for a gripping trilogy and Die Alone is a suitable finish to it.

4 out of 5 stars