Reviewed by: Keith Nixon
Genre: Crime / Thriller
Approximate word count: 80-85,000 words
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Author:
Declan
Burke lives in Ireland with his family. To date he has published four
critically acclaimed novels. In addition Declan hosts a website dedicated to
Irish crime fiction, Crime Always Pays.
To learn
more about the author visit his website.
Description:
By day Karen
works for disgraced plastic surgeon Frank, by night she carries out armed
robberies. Whilst holding up a store she meets Ray, who also has two roles –
mural painter and kidnapper.
Frank lives
the high-life, but he’s bankrupt. He needs a lot of money, and fast, to resolve
his many problems. So he employs local crook Terry to kidnap his ex-wife,
Madge. The plan – get an insurance payout for $500,000 and jet off somewhere
hot.
The trouble
is Madge is Karen’s best friend and Ray is the one who’ll be snatching her.
Throw psychopath Rossi, fresh out of prison and gunning for Karen, into the mix
and things are going to get very messy, very quickly…
Appraisal:
Two
comments before I start this review:
1) I’ve clearly been living in a hole
for the last few years as this was my first experience of Mr. Burke’s writing.
2) I have a very short attention span.
Number one
is now corrected (thankfully) but number two is a permanent affliction. I get
bored easily, I find it hard to stick with long books that don’t grab me by my
throat in the first couple of pages, I physically groan when I see the book
size measure on the kindle screen going off the scale.
Can’t help
it, it’s just me.
So when I
start The Big O, I don’t know of Mr.
Burke and the book looks huge. Oh dear. But this is the opening paragraph:
In the bar Karen drinking
vodka-tonic, Ray on brandy to calm his nerves. Karen told him how people react
to death and a stick-up in pretty much the same way: shock, disbelief, anger,
acceptance.
Then Karen
goes on to describe how to carry out said stick-up, it transpires this is how
she met Ray (having nearly shot him). And so within a couple of paragraphs we
plunge headlong into a whip-crack smart novel that barrels along at high pace
that simply compels me to finish it. For the next couple of days I’m stuck with
my nose in my kindle, much to my wife’s disgust as she wants me to get stuck
into dreaded DIY instead, but I’m simply too absorbed by the characters and
their activities to do anything else but read.
In short I
thoroughly enjoyed The Big O and was
disappointed when I finally put it down, simply because the joyride was over.
This is a
very cleverly plotted, character driven novel. There are relatively few
characters but all are very strong, have flaws (to varying degrees) but display
hidden depths that are gradually revealed as the narrative progresses, adding
to it.
The action
is split into seven segments – the week long period over which the snatch is
planned and occurs. These segments are then broken up by short chapters (which
keeps the pace high) each headlined with the particular person whose
perspective it follows – the narrative is modified accordingly. The prose is
economic, very sharp and strongly dialogue driven.
What I
really liked about The Big O and that
set it apart from the pack was that initially the story seems well sign posted,
i.e. it appears obvious what’s going to happen next, but Burke was simply
lulling me into a false sense of security before throwing me into a tail spin
with a twist. This happened on numerous occasions. In the end I gave up
guessing – hence the joyride.
For
example, Anna. I had a concept of who the character was and how they fitted
with the others, but I was completely wrong (I won’t say any more so as not to
give it away). Then there’s the snatch, again the cards fall in a completely
different way to how I envisaged they would. It’s very, very well done.
Overall a
thoroughly enjoyable, clever and well plotted read that simply makes me want to
find more of Burke’s work.
FYI:
Adult
scenes.
Format/Typo Issues:
None.
Rating: ***** Five Stars
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