Book Review – Stone bruises by Simon Beckett; Sean may have escaped from the frying pan but not realised he’s now in the fire.

Simon Beckett is an established author, having written four books featuring Dr David Hunter, a forensic anthropologist.  I’ve not read any of the Hunter books, so this was my first experience of Beckett’s writing.

Sean is in trouble and on the run – he must have done something bad as he’s abandoned a blood spattered car and is trying to hide.  Walking in French woodland, his foot caught in steel jaws of a vicious mantrap.  He can’t prise the mantrap open and he can’t loosen the spike that holds the trap in place.  He’s well and truly trapped and in the summer heat, falls unconscious. 

Sean wakes up in a musty barn, realising he has a badly injured foot.  Drifting in and out of consciousness, he finds himself being looked after by two daughters of a curmudgeonly old farmer.  The farmer’s an unpleasant man, who demands obedience from his daughters through constant angry bullying.  The way the farmer points his rifle at Sean frightens him too.

As Sean’s foot slowly recovers, you see two stories unfolding – the past events that led him to flee Britain and his current life on the farm, hiding from the police, whilst being drawn into the strange lives of the farmer and his two daughters.

I had no preconceptions about Beckett or this book as I’d not read any of his work in the past.  Stone Bruises isn’t a breathless race against time novel.  As a slow burn thriller, it’s well paced, and Beckett drip feeds the reader with just enough information to keep you engaged.  He slowly introduces and weaves the two plot strands of past and present together.  As the story progresses, there’s a kind of brooding underlying tension that keeps ratcheting up through small clues, as Sean settles into the lazy and almost passive rhythm of isolated farm life, whilst hiding from the law.

There were red herrings aplenty as well as good clues, although it wasn’t easy to see the wood for the trees.  I couldn’t quite work out which was greater – Sean’s naivety about his circumstances and what’s happening on the farm against his desire to hide from the law.  Beckett certainly kept me guessing right up to the end and I was at best less than 50% right in my deductions.

When I finished the book, I was glad that I picked it up.  Beckett wasn’t an author I normally have on my reading list, but he is now.  Enough said!

Romancrimeblogger