#BlogTour - The Silent Man by David Fennell

A father is murdered in the dead of night in his London home, his head wrapped tightly in tape, a crude sad face penned over his facial features. But the victim's only child is left alive and unharmed at the scene.

Met Police detectives Grace Archer and Harry Quinn have more immediate concerns. Notorious gangster Frankie White has placed a target on Archer's back, and there's no one he won't harm to get to her.

Then a second family is murdered, leaving young Uma Whitmore as the only survivor. Once again the victim's face is found wrapped and inked.

With a serial killer at large, DI Archer and DS Quinn must stay alive long enough to find the connection between these seemingly random victims. Can they do it before another child is made an orphan?

David Fennell is a new author to me. THE SILENT MAN is the third in his DI Grace Archer series, something I didn’t know when starting the book. The novel begins with a very tense and chilling murder of a father, by a killer who gains access to the victim’s home without force, without detection, and leaves no trace other than a man suffocated, his head taped, and a son who heard nothing, unaware until his discovery of his father’s body next morning.  We then meet DI Archer and DS Quinn.

Initially a little confusing, there is a lot going on, with several callbacks to events in previous novels but, like Marvel Comics used to do, anticipating that this might be a first reader, Fennell brings us up to speed, without excessive exposition, respecting his readers’ intelligence and ability to put it together. Di Archer is a prime target for a London Crime Boss who blames her for the death of a jailed family member and so targets Grace’s grandfather. There are moles in the Metropolitan Police and the organised crime gang seem able to attack Archer with impunity. It’s a little Infernal Affairs/The Departed in Charing Cross, and, while I wasn’t drawn to it as much as the concurrent hunt for the killer, possibly due to a lack of familiarity with the characters, it is well-plotted, very well written, and the protagonists engagingly drawn.

When a second body is discovered with seeming links to the first, another child the sole survivor, Archer and Quinn suspect a serial killer and it is here that things really took off for me. The killings, seen from the murderer’s POV, are harrowing and heart-stopping. The search for evidence is painstaking and littered with red herrings. As a procedural crime narrative the novel is first class, the constant threat hanging over the main detective, heightening the tension constantly. There are other subplots which eventually dovetail with the main threads and the author expertly garners the reader’s sympathies for the characters, and not always for those you might expect.

Yes, it may be have been better to start at the beginning of the series, but I did not feel lost or my enjoyment of the story irrevocably harmed by not doing so, and I look forward to dropping back and catching up.

The Legend of Charlie Fish by Josh Rountree

“Odd, creepy, funny, The Black Lagoon meets the Six Gun universe. High up on the way-cool factor. You need this.” —Joe R. Lansdale, Edgar Award–winning author of the Hap and Leonard series 

As an unlikely found-family flees toward Galveston, a psychic young girl bonds with Charlie Fish, an enigmatic gill-man. Meanwhile, they are pursued by bounty hunters determined to profit from the spectacle of Charlie. But the Great Storm—the worst natural disaster in U.S. history—is on its way. Josh Rountree’s strikingly original debut novel ranges effortlessly between the Gothic, pulp, literary, Western, and comedic. With his vivid imagery, evocative storytelling, and uncanny wit, Rountree enters the fine tradition of Texan storytellers, wading into True Grit by way of The Shape of Water

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Paradise was a whirlpool of unnatural greens and gold coral reefs, phosphorescent flowers and palaces cut into the heart of undersea caverns. 

THE LEGEND OF CHARLIE FISH is quite simply one of the best novels I have read this year. Set at the turn of the 20^th Century, a time when the American Old West was beginning to disappear, it is the story of damaged characters - Floyd Betts, estranged from the late father whom he arrives in town to bury, and the orphans he ‘adopts’, Nellie and Hank, whose parents have been murdered by the townspeople who condemned their as a witch. On the return to Galveston, the trio rescue a creature from two ‘scoundrels’ they encounter on the road. While Floyd initially thinks the men have captured a huge fish, Nellie, who has inherited a form of telepathy, ‘whisper talk’, from her mother, recognises the captive as a sentient being, whom she names Charlie Fish.

There are obviously fantastical elements - the titular character is a Creature From The Black Lagoon-like amphibious man - but it is thoroughly grounded in reality, and what a reality; the climax plays out against the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Josh Rountree’s description of the storm is frighteningly visceral; you really hear, and feel, the wind and surging water, the buildings moving, the almost complete disorientation. I would have to think long and hard to find a better evocation of the destructive power of nature.

I believe this is Josh Rountree’s first novel but his prose is beautiful, even when describing intense violence, either of the storm or the swift retribution of a semi-lawless society. THE LEGEND OF CHARLIE FISH is reminiscent of Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman, of Joe R. Lansdale, but Rountree has his own voice. I thoroughly enjoyed it and rushed breathlessly through the story. I will reread it and look forward to see what comes next from the author.

About the Author: Josh Rountree has published more than sixty stories in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies, including Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Realms of Fantasy, The Deadlands, Bourbon Penn, PseudoPod, PodCastle, Daily Science Fiction, and A Punk Rock Future. Several of his stories have received honorable mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventeenth and Twenty-First Annual Collections, as well as The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection. His latest short fiction collection is Fantastic Americana: Stories from Fairwood Press. Josh lives somewhere in the untamed wilds of Texas with his wife and children, and he tweets about books, records, and guitars at @josh_rountree.