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They say you can never go home again, and maybe things would have turned out better if Johnny Richardson had heeded that advice. He's spent the last eight years in London but finds he needs to return to the life he left behind so that he can make up for all the damage he caused before his departure. While on a trip to a lake with his brother and girlfriend, he succumbed to sexual desire and left Stan on his own. Stan entered the water and drowned, with Johnny rushing to him and helping bring him back to life. Alas, it was not soon enough, as Stan suffered irreversible brain damage as a result of oxygen deprivation. Johnny berates himself constantly for what happened; Stan never blames him and loves and reveres him. Stokoe paints a wonderfully poignant and touching picture of their relationship. Johnny returns to a world that hasn't changed all that much. He and Stan live with their father, a hard-working man who is emotionally stunted. Johnny soon renews his relationship with his former girlfriend, Marla, who has loved him all this time. Her life for the past eight years has been a study in misery. At times, she turned to hooking. Part of that was due to blackmailing pressure from her lover before Johnny, Gareth; but it is not always clear why Marla is so willing to constantly degrade herself. Gareth is a mean and vicious individual; in dealing with him, Johnny finds himself killing a man, with Gareth holding the evidence of the murder to manipulate Johnny. It turns out that Johnny's father also had some dealings with Gareth. He purchased a piece of land known as the "Empty Mile" which at one time had been panned for gold, with no return. However, Mr Richardson believed that former prospectors had not looked in the right place and that there was lots of money to be made from the gold on the property. When he disappears, it is up to Johnny to try to figure out why the seemingly useless land was so important to his father and what exactly was going on with Gareth, a young man his father seemed to detest. Reading EMPTY MILE is like being a storm watcher. There's a lot of forewarning that things are going to be bad; the atmosphere darkens all along the way. Every once in a while there's a glimmer of sunshine which provides hope that maybe there is a way out of the various horrors that have been visited on the characters. The hope is false. It was difficult to read about what these people did to themselves and each other. There is quite a contrast between Stokoe's lyrically beautiful writing and the terrible things that happen to the characters along the way. As the book progresses, the despair is palpable. Unfortunately, the book was overly long; a lot of the emotional turmoil that Johnny faced was explained several times, which somewhat diminished its impact. Nonetheless, you'll find EMPTY MILE to be shocking, heartbreaking, gritty—Stokoe is definitely an author to look out for if you're a fan of noir. § Formerly a training development manager for a large company, Maddy is now retired and continues to enable the addiction of crime fiction fans as owner of the online discussion group, 4 Mystery Addicts(4MA), while avidly reading in every possible free moment herself.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, September 2010
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