Jon Morgan is a retired police Superintendent and francophile who, it is said, has consequently seen almost everything awful that people can do to each other. He relishes quality writing in all genres but advises particularly on police procedure for authors including John Harvey and Jon McGregor. Haunts bookshops both new and secondhand and stands with Erasmus: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I may buy food and clothes.”
I am not sure that I will ever look at a hotel room in quite the same way again……
‘Confused and complex.’ This is not a criticism, but a quote from the novel itself, in fact from a book within the book. I was suitably confused as the book is satisfyingly complex. It challenges the reader until almost the last moment. Researching the author’s rationale and inspiration, we find the central premises of the novel to be that of the voyeur; guests in a holiday complex being recorded in the ‘privacy’ of their bedroom has its core based in reality.
Natalie, a thirty-something Dublin ‘Instagram-influencer,’ happy with her husband Mike suddenly feels vulnerable and threatened. Trolled by some of her followers, her fears lead her to investigate her husband’s apparent, errant behaviour and she ends up in a place where he apparently and inexplicably stayed; Shannamore – a one-horse seaside town in remote Ireland, and off-season.
This is the locus for a meeting of various characters, none of whom are without their own personal demons and most are highly dysfunctional in one-way or another. All have pasts and secrets, of which some are darker than others. The puppet-master who is pulling many of the strings is a particularly deranged individual an even more psychotic and dangerous, perhaps a (female) version of Basil Fawlty – without any of the comic redeeming features.
Chapter headings give structure to the book with stop, fast-forward, pause or rewind symbols forming a base-point. The use of these motifs for play, record, pause et. al, reflects the footage being recorded – not just for personal consumption, but for a wider sale, on a pay-per-view basis online.
The investigator here is a wannabe ‘journalist’ for an online news streaming service in the ‘Ents’ division (that's celebrity drivel to you and me). Fixated with moving into mainstream journalistic work and no less dysfunctional in her personal life than some of the other characters, solves the layers of crime(s) and, as in the way our "ruber-necking", "tell-all" society, then profits from a book about it.
This is Catherine Ryan Howard’s third novel and while I do not inhabit or indeed fully understand the social media world she describes, is a clearly talented and devilishly devious writer and chronicler of our increasingly baffling and bizarre society.
