Review: Harrowing, riveting, genuinely original
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 24, 2014
Most modern crime novels with a gritty bent seem to focus on the relationship between the perpetrator of the crime and the detective or police officer hunting him or her, showing how much they have in common. In Hamelin' s Child, DJ Bennett takes a different approach. Michael "Mikey" Redford is a seventeen-year-old boy, rebellious although not remarkably so, who finds himself dragged out of his middle-class life on his birthday and hurled into a sordid, terrifying world of hard drugs, prostitution and violence. With startling speed, he adapts to the life, making his rescue from it all the more difficult for his sister Kate, herself trapped by others' expectations in a life she never really wanted, and Derek, the (presumably) unhappily married police detective in charge of finding Michael.With its graphic descriptions of heroin abuse, homosexual rape and beatings, the story could easily have wallowed in luridness. It's a testament to the author's skill as a writer that this is never allowed to happen, and despite the horrors you get the sense that the narrative' s under tight, expert control. The structure of the novel is masterful, with an apparently climactic midpoint series of events which turn out instead to open a new phase in the story. And Hamelin' s Child opens with one of the best first lines I've ever read.A most impressive debut, and I'm looking forward to reading the next two novels in the series. Highly recommended.