{"id":578,"date":"2012-06-03T10:35:44","date_gmt":"2012-06-03T16:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=578"},"modified":"2012-06-03T10:35:44","modified_gmt":"2012-06-03T16:35:44","slug":"s-j-bolton-dead-scared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/s-j-bolton-dead-scared\/","title":{"rendered":"S.J. Bolton: Dead Scared"},"content":{"rendered":"
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S.J. Bolton, one of the most original of all contemporary crime writers, has apparently decided to embrace a series identity instead of writing a string of stand alones.\u00a0 Her last novel, Now You See Me,<\/em> was, for her, her most conventional book.\u00a0 It\u2019s a police procedural set in contemporary London, though she added her own twists to the formula: the story was rooted in Jack the Ripper lore, and she used a gender lens to tell her story, subtly including a female-centric point of view throughout.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This new novel is a follow up to Now You See Me, <\/em>using the characters of Lacey Flint and Mark Joesbury from the last novel, and the character of Evie Oliver from Blood Harvest.<\/em> And really, as one of Bolton\u2019s strengths as a writer is creating memorable and vivid characters, it makes sense to reuse them.\u00a0 In this novel, Lacey is undercover in the safest of all locales: Cambridge University.\u00a0 Or is it?\u00a0 As Dorothy L. Sayers (Gaudy Night<\/em>) and Elizabeth George (For the Sake of Elena<\/em>) have proven before her, Oxford\/Cambridge can be a creepy and threatening place despite its charm.<\/p>\n

Bolton\u2019s other skill is setting, used to great effect in her first three novels, and I think part of it was that the settings there were more exotic \u2013 the Shetland Islands, for example \u2013 London and Cambridge have had their exposure.\u00a0 What she does well here is describe the beauty of Cambridge, while layering on the threatening aspects as her story moves forward.\u00a0 It\u2019s kind of like a Hitchcock movie:\u00a0 it seems normal and harmless, even lovely, but as more layers are unpeeled it\u2019s far from it.<\/p>\n

She also uses a timetable to great effect, accelerating the suspense while fitting together the parts of her story like an expert watchmaker.\u00a0 Our book club recently read Kate Atkinson\u2019s Case Histories<\/em> which also uses a timeline, but in Atkinson\u2019s case, the timeline had little relevance to the plot.\u00a0 Here, it\u2019s essential.\u00a0 Bolton begins the story with Lacey ready to jump off the roof of a building, then works backwards from there.\u00a0 As you read, you are thinking the whole time: how has Lacey gotten to that point?\u00a0 It\u2019s not clear until almost the end of the novel, which of course indicates the skills of a top notch suspense writer.<\/p>\n

Lacey has been called in by Joesbury to merely observe and report.\u00a0 Being an excellent cop with time on her hands (she\u2019s not an actual student, after all) she can\u2019t help herself.\u00a0 She begins to investigate.\u00a0 What she\u2019s there to try and find out is why there have been an unusual number of suicides \u2013 most of them using unusual methods \u2013 at Cambridge.\u00a0 The thought is that someone or something is encouraging the students to kill themselves, and the jumping off point is possibly some kind of suicide website.<\/p>\n

Lacey works with Evie who has assumed the role of Lacey\u2019s tutor, as a cover.\u00a0 Evie has her own suspicions, and some of whatever is going on also seems to be affecting her as she\u2019s being stalked by someone, with a series of creepy incidents becoming creepier as they move forward.\u00a0 Bolton really has the skills of an old fashioned gothic story teller \u2013 think perhaps Wilkie Collins or Daphne DuMaurier \u2013 and she applies them perfectly to the contemporary crime novel.\u00a0 Your heart is frequently in your throat as you read.\u00a0 As I got toward the end of the book, reading it was almost like picking a scab – you know you shouldn\u2019t, but you just have to look.\u00a0 Unlike a scab, however, instead of nice pink healthy skin underneath, there are lots of creepy things under the rocks Bolton the storyteller has strewn in the reader\u2019s path.<\/p>\n

This story is told with precision, but Bolton also squeezes what I\u2019d call the \u201cjuice\u201d out of the story as the characters are indelible, and she really makes you invested in them.\u00a0 Lacey sitting at the bedside of one of the unsuccessful suicides is especially heartbreaking, as in some way are the parts of Cambridge that are simply lovely that sometimes dapple through the story.\u00a0 It makes the book as a whole sparkle.\u00a0 Whatever incarnation Bolton chooses to continue her writing career, I\u2019ll be happy to be reading over her shoulder.\u00a0 She\u2019s an amazing talent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

S.J. Bolton, one of the most original of all contemporary crime writers, has apparently decided to embrace a series identity instead of writing a string of stand alones.\u00a0 Her last novel, Now You See Me, was, for her, her most conventional book.\u00a0 It\u2019s a police procedural set in contemporary London, though she added her own … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-british"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":580,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}