Published by riverrun,
30 April 2020.
ISBN: 978-1-52941169-0 (PB)
30 April 2020.
ISBN: 978-1-52941169-0 (PB)
Peter May (no relation!) is now a successful and highly thought of crime writer with several series to his name. But in 2005, although he had written several crime novels, he was as yet unpublished. He was inspired by the widespread deadly ‘bird-flu’ to tackle the effect of a pandemic upon Britain, in particular London. He sent the resultant manuscript to some publishers, but their response was that the idea of a lockdown of London resulting from a pandemic was not credible. So, he put the rejected manuscript in a file and there it languished for 15 years. Little did those publishers, or anyone else, know!
And then, in 2020,
the world was struck by coronavirus and Peter extracted his novel and sent it
to his publisher who, of course, took it on.
The novel begins with
London already struck down by the virus with hundreds of thousands dead,
including the Prime Minister, a breakdown of law and order, and the army
exercising iron control of the streets. There is an anti-virus drug, FluKill,
manufactured by a French-based pharmaceutical company, but supplies are limited
although the police are among those entitled. However, the work of the
Metropolitan Police continues as best it can, although the virus has taken has
taken a deadly toll of many of its officers so that when a holdall full of
human bones is discovered during demolition work on a building site, the only
officer who can be spared is Jack McNeil who, with his marriage having fallen
apart, is taking early retirement and is anxious to spend as much time as he
can with his young son Sean. Nevertheless, McNeil is intrigued by some aspects
of the case, particularly when the forensic pathologist Tom Bennett informs him
that the bones are those of a child, are not old, and had been chemically
cleaned. McNeil’s girlfriend, wheel-chair bound Amy Wu, whose speciality is
facial reconstruction, tells him that the child had been a girl, probably
Chinese, who had not spent much of her life in the UK, and had a cleft palate
which would have resulted in a severe hare-lip. And when, in the course of the
novel, tragedy hits McNeil’s family; he is devastated by this and all the more
determined to discover the truth about the young girl’s death.
A parallel narrative
is that of the young hitman, Pinkie, who has modelled himself on the
protagonist of Grahame Greene’s famous pre-war novel, Brighton Rock. He is being instructed by a mysterious Mr Smith to
‘tidy up’ various people including those whom McNeil is enquiring into.
This is a gripping
story with scenes set in a London which is familiar yet unfamiliar, and an
increasing body-count and a dramatic ending. The story is grounded by an
impressive amount of research and McNeil, despite his readiness to use his
fists, is a sympathetic character with convincing love for his son and for Amy.
Recommended
------
Reviewer: Radmila
May
Peter May was born and
raised in Scotland. He was an award-winning journalist at the age of twenty-one
and a published novelist at twenty-six. When his first book was adapted as a
major drama series for the BCC, he quit journalism and during the high-octane
fifteen years that followed, became one of Scotland's most successful
television dramatists. He created three prime-time drama series, presided over
two of the highest-rated serials in his homeland as script editor and producer,
and worked on more than 1,000 episodes of ratings-topping drama before deciding
to leave television to return to his first love, writing novels. He has won
several literature awards in France, received the USA's Barry Award for The
Blackhouse, the first in his internationally bestselling Lewis Trilogy; and
in 2014 was awarded the ITV Specsavers Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read of
the Year award for Entry Island. Peter now lives in South-West France
with his wife, writer Janice Hally.
Radmila May was
born in the U.S. but has lived in the U.K. since she was seven apart from seven
years in The Hague. She read law at university but did not go into practice.
Instead she worked for many years for a firm of law publishers and still does occasional
work for them including taking part in a substantial revision and updating of
her late husband’s legal practitioners’ work on Criminal Evidence published
late 2015. She has also contributed short stories with a distinctly criminal
flavour to two of the Oxford Stories anthologies published by Oxpens Press – a
third story is to be published shortly in another Oxford Stories anthology –
and is now concentrating on her own writing.
