To The Last Page

There's a certain amount of pleasure to be derived from a well-constructed thriller, even if it follows a familiar pattern, one that draws you in and leads you by the nose through the steps of escalation from initial criminal act (usually murder) through the investigation, complications and twists to resolution. What I find even more thrilling is a book that presents you with a highly unusual circumstance from the outset that seems almost impossible, meaning that you have no way of guessing where it is going to go from one page to the next. That's great of course, as long of course as the author provides a suitable, credible and necessarily inventive resolution. I'm afraid that Will Dean just doesn't follow though on what he sets up at the start of The Last Passenger . The novel certainly delivers in the WTF stakes right from the start, as Caroline Ripley, after only one night aboard the transatlantic liner RMS Atlantica, wakes up to find that everyone else on the ship ...

Pulp fiction has the reputation of being designed for cheap thrills, and certainly that is a part of its attraction, but it has many often overlooked qualities, not least of which is the breaking of taboos and stretching boundaries of what is "acceptable" in writing. Often that is a side benefit of striving for those cheap thrills. The finest exponents of the art form - and it certainly rates as such as far as I'm concerned - also demonstrate a tremendous facility for plotting, structure and characterisation, all the components of good writing. It's not surprising then that many also rate as literary greats - Raymond Chandler certainly, Patricia Highsmith also - that manage to shine a light on dark motivations of crime in relation to society, taking them down paths that few mainstream writers would dare to venture. Written in 1960, The Woman Chaser by Charles Willeford has a deceptive title, but the path that it takes you down is also a deceptive one. It's clearl...

There is of course no such thing as a perfect crime, but Vigo and his friend Sylvain think they have managed it. Or perhaps they don't really think of what they have done as a crime but an unfortunate accident that works in their favour. It certainly wasn't premeditated to kill anyone while driving a car in an area of deserted warehouses in Dunkirk at 100kmh in the dark with no lights on, but when they hit a man and find that he has a suitcase containing €2 million euro, well, disposing of the body and holding onto the money certainly can't be treated as anything less than criminal. But what is no one was there, no one sees it and no one finds the body and they keep the 2 million, does that make it a perfect crime? What Vigo and Sylvain don't really think to ask themselves - until it is too late of course - is what a man was doing in that remote deserted place with such a huge sum of money, and did no-one really witness what happened? It sounds suspiciously like a ranso...