Coffin Road: An utterly gripping crime thriller from the author of The China Thrillers

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In questa storia i misteri e le domande, a cui non seguono risposte adeguate, si susseguono incessantemente, creando una bella atmosfera fatta di suspense, rivelazioni e colpi di scena a più livelli. His life is becoming dangerous, and he has no idea whom to trust. Karen finds herself in similar dicey situations in her quest for answers as well. Nothing is as it appears. Three people on different paths in their lives – the danger and peril which was bearing down on them all, unbeknown to each other would become catastrophic. What would be the outcome? Was something terrible going to happen?

Coffin Road | Crime Fiction Lover Coffin Road | Crime Fiction Lover

The second character we meet is a tattooed, hair-dyed, pierced, loud-music-blasting teen girl. She's self destructive (which according to the author is the only reason why one would get tattoos and piercings) because her daddy died. Or vanished, to be precise. When Detective George Gunn was summonsed to cross the Atlantic to the Flannan Isles where a long standing mystery was still unsolved, his sense of unease was great. The ensuing discovery of a man’s body with no identification meant Gunn had to find his killer, as well as a motive – and he wasn’t sure he was up to the task.Then you have Neal’s lover. Now who is she? And what are all those bee stings about? Why, let’s have some excruciating exposition to explain and how a Swiss agribusiness is ruining the world for future tattooed, multiply pierced, dyed hair, promiscuous, ignorant wee lasses.

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And then of course when she discovers that he’s got the memory loss, it’s almost then a reverse situation, it’s like being with a stranger. If you’re with somebody that you know well then you’re totally at ease, you know them and they know you, you kind of have shorthand for your relationship. But when the other person has lost their memory and doesn’t know you, then in a way you’ve totally lost touch with them and you don’t know them anymore either. The persona of this guy that she knew was an artificial one anyway, but he doesn’t know that. So it’s endlessly complex that way.

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Chi è Neal? Come mai non ricorda nulla del suo passato da quando si è riavuto su una spiaggia sulla quale la burrasca lo ha scaraventato? Cosa è successo prima? Chi sono le persone che mostrano di conoscerlo tanto bene? It was interesting. I took a different approach. In the book there are kind of three strands to it. There’s the guy himself who’s lost his memory, there’s the girl who’s looking into the death of her father, and there’s the cop who’s investigating the body found out on the lighthouse island. And the girl’s story and the cop’s story are both told in a conventional third person narrative, but when it came to telling the guy’s story, I told it first person present tense. So that it was absolutely immediate, you’re actually in his head sharing his confusions, his discoveries, his revelations with him at every point, so that you’re entirely with him. And when I was writing it, that’s how it was for me too, I was entirely with him, I was living that experience. It was taking that first person present tense that made it totally immediate. He draws some marvellous word pictures: “Despite the absence of people, there were plenty of boats. Fishing boats and motor launches, a couple of sailing boats and a handful of rowing boats which had seen better days, all lined up side by side, nudging each other playfully in the wind” and “The sky is more broken now, the light sharp and clear, clouds painted against the blue in breathless brushstrokes of white and grey and pewter. Moving fast in the wind to cast racing shadows on the sand below” are examples. Well there are two things behind it really. One, was this vision I had in my mind’s eye of a man washed up on a deserted beach. I very much knew what beach it was, it was a beach called Luskentyre on the Isle of Harris which has been voted the most beautiful beach in Britain and one of the ten most beautiful beaches in the world, and it’s enormous. It’s winged by mountains and the sea is turquoise, it’s an extraordinary place. And I just had this image of a guy getting washed up there, coming to, and realising that he had no idea who he was, where he was or how he’d got there. And that was the vision that I had for the opening of the book.