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STOLEN SOULS (AUDIO)
by Stuart Neville, read by Frank Grimes
Whole Story Audio Books, April 2012
Unabridged pages
20.41 GBP
ISBN: 1407499262


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

It's the depths of a Belfast winter and a young woman has blood on her hands. Galya has been brought to Ireland from Ukraine under false pretences. She'd been expecting to teach English to a family in Dublin – instead she's been 'rescued' from a mushroom farm and taken north of the border to be forced into prostitution. Now she's running for her life – to the man who gave her a cross on a chain and his phone number and told her to phone him if she needed help.

Meanwhile, Detective Inspector Jack Lennon is hoping for a quiet Christmas. He needs to spend quality time with his daughter, who is traumatised by the murder of her mother. It's odd-on, though, that he won't get it – bodies are piling up as gang warfare goes into overdrive. And it's a race to see who gets to Galya first.

Lennon is the archetypal flawed cop, and he's a difficult man to like. But he's dogged and also determined to bring down a mole at the top of the PSNI. Lennon's past history with his superiors and various assorted villains might give a reader who hasn't read Neville's previous books a moment or two of confusion.

Neville's THE TWELVE has always stuck in my mind – and that book showed a willingness to experiment with the boundaries of the thriller, as it moved towards horror and supernatural. STOLEN SOULS is more orthodox, but truly creepy in places, even if at times it feels like One Damn Thing On Top of Another. There's a lot going on as it criss-crosses between Galya, the man who rescues her, Lennon and a Lithuanian people trafficker and his sidekick.

The book owes much of its punch to the chilling creation that is Billy Crawford, made more threatening by the flat northern English tones captured by narrator Frank Grimes. Crawford is the man who has pledged to save Galya – but his plot thread is never quite as obvious as you think it might be.

Grimes, an experienced stage and TV actor, gives a reading Heavy With Portentousness. It's a pretty good reading on the whole, but could do with a little more harsh Belfast grit. Grimes is from the Republic of Ireland and his north of the border accent isn't quite there at times.

I was in two minds about the ending, which leaves rather too many threads hanging. I've been burned once too often by authors doing this – and then losing their book contract. I'm sure there's no chance of Neville, a strong and innovative writer, falling foul of this. But there are some ends I do like to see tied up neatly. If you're an optimist, look on it as a glass half full and another outing to look forward to from the long-suffering Lennon.

§ Sharon Wheeler is a UK-based journalist, writer and lecturer.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, June 2012

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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