Review: The Final Silence

The Final Silence. Stuart Neville. Crime thriller.

No less than in any business, a good librarian knows her customers' tastes. And when Julie handed me a book with my name on it on a yellow Post-It note, I was pretty sure I'd enjoy it. "One of the best openings I've read," she commented.

And it was. Is. I read the first two-thirds of The Final Silence at a sitting that evening, finished it the following morning.

I haven't read Stuart Neville before. But I will do again. He writes a good gritty thriller which has characters with, well ... character. Mainly flawed character, often the best kind.

The Final Silence is set in post-Good Friday Agreement Belfast, its 'hero' a troubled and in trouble Detective Inspector with the PSNI. DI Jack Lennon is recovering from gunshot wounds and trying to pick up the threads of an unravelled professional and personal life. It's not easy, and he's not an easy man anyhow.

A man dies. A woman is killed. Two deaths that lead Lennon to chase a book of horrors and be chased as a murder suspect. And eventually to a future which he admits to having no idea about.

The writing is tight, no wasted words. Enough, though, to keep the story moving at a pace to retain a reader's anticipation. With deft sketches of a city still far from full recovery after the trauma of the Troubles has been put in its past. Indeed, Belfast and Lennon are complementary metaphors for each other. Wounded, scarred. Hurting still but pulling themselves towards a recovery. Loose ends to tie up, but just not now.

My personal preference for leisure reading is crime fiction, but generally I don't much like settings on my home island. Ken Bruen and his grotesque Galway underworld is one exception. Stuart Neville is now another. This writer joins a list of authors whose books I will always pick up in the knowledge that they will be thoughtful, satisfying. Probably spare with the words.

Important, that last. I have time for a short book, or a long book, but neither if the writer pads or pontificates. Good writers let the story tell itself. For as long, less or more, as it takes. As Stuart Neville does with The Final Silence.

Ask Julie to put a Post-It on it, with your name.