The back cover promises an exciting police procedural about an unsolved kidnapping from 14 years previously. Apparently the police press relations officer will wish he'd never found out what he discovers when he looks into the cold case.
David Peace states in a review on the back cover that this is one of the best crime novels ever written.
So I started this book with high hopes. Sadly, that review by David Peace makes me not want to ever read one of his novels. If he thinks this book is that good, I really don't want to know what he writes. If this is the bar he aims for... no thank you.
Warning - some spoilers in the review to follow.
What this book is, is 600 plus pages of office politics, about 5 to 10 pages of following the family of a kidnap victim and a few pages of the central character chatting with his wife about office politics.
We know the daughter of the central character is missing. This is never resolved or indeed relevant to the story in hand. The probable identity of the original kidnapper/murderer is revealed near the end of the book, but in the most ridiculous method of solving a crime ever in fiction that I've ever read. And it's not even solved by the boring character we've been following for the last 630 pages. And he's not even been proved guilty by the police so he's not even been arrested.
I can almost see what the author is aiming for, but this book is at least 400 pages too long. People who accuse stephen King of bloat in his fiction need to read this. They'll see what bloat is.
Most "irrelevant" stuff in a King novel is good character building or community building. It makes for a bigger picture and enriches the story whether it's relevant to the central plot or not (most of the time). In this the irrelevant stuff is just that. And it's repetitive.
And it's repetitive.
And it's very repetitive.
And it's extremely repetitive.
There would be less repetiton in a month long OCD convention than you'll find in this.
And after 630 pages of bloated repetion, there's not even a resolution to three quarters of the plot details. In fact make that nine tenths. I saw in Waterstones yesterday a book called Prefecture D - also by this author. Prefecture D is where all the office politics play out so I can only assume it's a sequel. Maybe some of the plot details will be solved in that book. Maybe not. I don't care. The only thing about the sequel that looks promising is that it's a third of the length of this one. Maybe he's learnt about conciseness in his writing since this book.
Not recommended. 3/10
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