Martyn Pig by Kevin Brooks
Feb. 6th, 2014 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
With his father dead, Martyn has a choice. Tell the police what happened – and be suspected of murder. Or get rid of the body and get on with the rest of his life.
Simple, right? Not quite. One story leads to another. Secrets and lies become darker and crazier. And Martyn is faced with twists and turns that leave him reeling.
Life is never easy. But death is even harder.
15-year-old Martyn Pig has lived with his alcoholic and physically abusive father ever since his mother walked out several years earlier. When Martyn’s father dies during an argument with Martyn, Martyn is sure that the police won’t believe that it was an accident, especially when he discovers that his dad has inherited £30,000 that he never told Martyn about.
Forced to ask his friend Alex for help, Martyn soon finds himself caught within a web of secrets, lies, deception, blackmail and death where the truth threatens to expose him at any moment …
Kevin Brooks’s debut YA novel is a deftly written thriller that combines great characterisation with a twisting noir plot. Martyn has a great narrative voice (especially his self-deprecating comments) and I really enjoyed the depiction of his friendship with Alex who wants to be an actress but is stuck with techie Dean. I did find Dean and Alex to be more thinly characterised than Martyn but my main complaint would be about the ending, which I won’t spoil but I had hoped for something a bit more hopeful than what we get and while that’s not a bad thing, I’d become so attached to Martyn that I wanted more for him. All in all though, this is a gripping read and if you want a good introduction to Brooks’s work, this is a good place to start.
Martyn’s narration hooks you in from the first page and I really loved the nods to noir (e.g. he’s reading Raymond Chandler during the book) and his love of detective fiction in general. His crush on Alex is sweet and believable as is his frustration that she’s seeing the creepy, bullying Dean. Alex is part girl-next-door, part femme fatale but in some ways she’s underdeveloped, particularly with regards to her reasons for going out with Dean who veers towards being a two dimensional cowardly bully with tech skills. I completely believed in Martyn’s reasons for keeping his father’s death a secret and Brooks does a good job of showing the psychological effects that this has on him. I did wonder what had happened to his mother and why she no longer wanted to see Martyn and wished that Brooks had touched on this but this is a picky point.
All in all the twists and turns of the plot kept be turning the pages and I’d recommend checking it out.
The Verdict:
Kevin Brooks’s debut YA novel is a deftly written thriller that combines great characterisation with a twisting noir plot. Martyn has a great narrative voice (especially his self-deprecating comments) and I really enjoyed the depiction of his friendship with Alex who wants to be an actress but is stuck with techie Dean. I did find Dean and Alex to be more thinly characterised than Martyn but my main complaint would be about the ending, which I won’t spoil but I had hoped for something a bit more hopeful than what we get and while that’s not a bad thing, I’d become so attached to Martyn that I wanted more for him. All in all though, this is a gripping read and if you want a good introduction to Brooks’s work, this is a good place to start.
With his father dead, Martyn has a choice. Tell the police what happened – and be suspected of murder. Or get rid of the body and get on with the rest of his life.
Simple, right? Not quite. One story leads to another. Secrets and lies become darker and crazier. And Martyn is faced with twists and turns that leave him reeling.
Life is never easy. But death is even harder.
15-year-old Martyn Pig has lived with his alcoholic and physically abusive father ever since his mother walked out several years earlier. When Martyn’s father dies during an argument with Martyn, Martyn is sure that the police won’t believe that it was an accident, especially when he discovers that his dad has inherited £30,000 that he never told Martyn about.
Forced to ask his friend Alex for help, Martyn soon finds himself caught within a web of secrets, lies, deception, blackmail and death where the truth threatens to expose him at any moment …
Kevin Brooks’s debut YA novel is a deftly written thriller that combines great characterisation with a twisting noir plot. Martyn has a great narrative voice (especially his self-deprecating comments) and I really enjoyed the depiction of his friendship with Alex who wants to be an actress but is stuck with techie Dean. I did find Dean and Alex to be more thinly characterised than Martyn but my main complaint would be about the ending, which I won’t spoil but I had hoped for something a bit more hopeful than what we get and while that’s not a bad thing, I’d become so attached to Martyn that I wanted more for him. All in all though, this is a gripping read and if you want a good introduction to Brooks’s work, this is a good place to start.
Martyn’s narration hooks you in from the first page and I really loved the nods to noir (e.g. he’s reading Raymond Chandler during the book) and his love of detective fiction in general. His crush on Alex is sweet and believable as is his frustration that she’s seeing the creepy, bullying Dean. Alex is part girl-next-door, part femme fatale but in some ways she’s underdeveloped, particularly with regards to her reasons for going out with Dean who veers towards being a two dimensional cowardly bully with tech skills. I completely believed in Martyn’s reasons for keeping his father’s death a secret and Brooks does a good job of showing the psychological effects that this has on him. I did wonder what had happened to his mother and why she no longer wanted to see Martyn and wished that Brooks had touched on this but this is a picky point.
All in all the twists and turns of the plot kept be turning the pages and I’d recommend checking it out.
The Verdict:
Kevin Brooks’s debut YA novel is a deftly written thriller that combines great characterisation with a twisting noir plot. Martyn has a great narrative voice (especially his self-deprecating comments) and I really enjoyed the depiction of his friendship with Alex who wants to be an actress but is stuck with techie Dean. I did find Dean and Alex to be more thinly characterised than Martyn but my main complaint would be about the ending, which I won’t spoil but I had hoped for something a bit more hopeful than what we get and while that’s not a bad thing, I’d become so attached to Martyn that I wanted more for him. All in all though, this is a gripping read and if you want a good introduction to Brooks’s work, this is a good place to start.
