‘Sharon Wright: Butterfly’ by John Lynch.

Published by Mandrill Press,
7 April 2023.
ISBN: 978-1-91019409-6 (PB)

Donald Carver is a hitman.  He is also a fetishist and sexual predator, and the novel begins with a chilling description of him spying on Stacy Teasdale from a café opposite her flat.  The young woman has no idea that she is being observed, nor has she done anything to attract her watcher’s attention.  Through Carver’s misogynistic gaze, though, she is a femme fatale and deserves to be taught a lesson.  He intends her harm, the only question is, what exactly will he do?  

This opening chapter leads the reader into an underworld of petty, and sometimes not so petty, criminality.  It is a world that occasionally collides with ordinary people living ordinary lives and into which the Sharon Wright of the title was born.  The eponymous protagonist, however, could not be more different than Stacy.

Sharon is married to John Wright, a hapless lackey known as Buggy who does errands for hard criminals.  She despises her spouse and treats him with disdain.  Moreover, whilst Buggy is desperate to please Sharon, his heart’s not in it and his ‘butterfly’ spouse’s promiscuous behaviour has all but eroded his confidence.  Then he gets the chance to become a real player in the crime game.  Buggy is determined to prove himself to the woman he loves and is rewarded when Sharon seems impressed.  Still, he is terrified, and with good reason.

The characters in this novel are thoroughly believable if not always likeable.  The author has captured the sense of hopelessness and pessimism that pursues the individuals he depicts. Sharon is an enigma, she wants security and to be respected, whilst using the men who, in turn, use her.  Can she find a way to break the circle?  Carver too is a complicated protagonist, impossible to warm to, a man you would not wish to meet, yet the author prompts us to consider how he became the person he now is.

Sharon Wright- Butterfly is written with precision and frankness as the author describes situations that we know take place, but hope never to be caught up in.  The book includes some explicit descriptions of sexual activity and explores shocking and deeply disturbing issues.  That said, it is an honest tale, well told.

To those who enjoy gritty, anything-but-cosy, crime this is not to be missed.
------
Reviewer: Dot Marshall-Gent 

John Lynch became a writer after he had spent more than 40 years in international sales, living and working on every continent except Antarctica. In 1989 he sold his first book to a publisher, and first article to a magazine and his first short story to BBC Radio 4. He now writes contemporary fiction in the name of John Lynch, historical fiction as R J Lynch, and police procedurals as JJ Sullivan.

Dot Marshall-Gent worked in the emergency services for twenty years first as a police officer, then as a paramedic and finally as a fire control officer before graduating from King’s College, London as a teacher of English in her mid-forties.  She completed a M.A. in Special and Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, London and now teaches part-time and writes mainly about educational issues.  Dot sings jazz and country music and plays guitar, banjo and piano as well as being addicted to reading mystery and crime fiction.