In Review

09 January 2009 12:16 BST

Lost Souls by Neil White

Published by Avon, out now, paperback, 493 pages, £6.99.

In a nutshell...

Visceral visions come to life

What's it all about?

DC Laura McGanity has made a big sacrifice for her reporter boyfriend Jack Garrett. Far away from her familiar and exciting London beat, she and Jack are expecting a taste of the quiet life in the Lancashire town of Blackley. However, it is not long before they realise that their jobs are going to be far from mundane. With an abductor at large and the town already scared for its children, a brutal murder sets them both on a path to the truth that will mystify and confound them both. Spurred on by a local recluse's paintings representing his purportedly precognitive nightmares, it becomes clear that they are on the verge of unlocking secrets that everyone seems to keep hidden.

Who's it by?

Senior Crown Prosecutor and acclaimed novelist Neil White. Battling it out in court by day and writing by night, White first made his mark in the crime fiction with Fallen Idols, which saw him compared to the award-winning Peter James. Having grown up above a shoe shop in South Yorkshire, White soon moved to Wakefield where he grew up on a tough housing estate. He moved away during his teens before returning to the city to study. White then obtained a law degree in Preston, which set him on the path to litigation in the criminal courts. He pursued his reawakened ambition of a career as a novelist in his spare time and secured a publishing deal in 2006.

This, his second novel sees Garrett and McGanity return to the council estates of Blackley, Lancashire, where they witness things a world away from the fond memories White holds for the estates he grew up on.

As an example...

"Egan looked down at the piece of paper and grinned. 'We need to do a vehicle check on this.'

The uniform smiled. 'Already done it.'

Egan pursed his lips a couple of times, like a nervous tic, and then asked, 'Who's the keeper?'

'Someone called Luke King.'

'Is he known to us?'

'His father is.'

'Go on.' Egan was sounding impatient again.

'Who is he?' Laura whispered to Pete.

Pete sighed. 'Some would say a local businessman, one of the most successful in Lancashire.

'And what would others say?'

'The most ruthless and sadistic person they have ever come across.'"

Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster...

Lancashire would seem an unlikely choice for a summer spectacular and there is probably not enough unique material within Lost Souls to invigorate any interest taking a slew of A listers there. Crime thriller adaptations have proved fairly unprofitable in recent years and it is unlikely that this novel would be able to buck that trend. It is difficult to imagine that it will attract the kind of readership that would make a myopic film industry take notice.

So is it any good?

It is a stable novel with a well-metered plot and a psychical element that gives it something of an edge on many crime thrillers. However, with the intrigue and mystery comes the same kind of banal social and criminal commentary that bogs many books in the genre down. His recurring description of the desolation and dysfunction experienced on the town's council estates soon become tedious precisely because the decay that White mourns is woefully obvious and does not need to be made explicit - and the book would read much more smoothly if it wasn't. It is narrative trap that many crime writers fall into: in keeping a wrought tempo going, there is a tendency to provide quick commentary to aggrandized circumstances that would be better served by understatement. A defter touch is needed to make this book stand out in an already crowded genre.

6/10

Mark Burton