Burial by Neil Cross
Feb. 2nd, 2009 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Can your guiltiest secret ever be buried?
Nathan has never been able to forget the worst night of his life: the party that led to the sudden, shocking disappearance of a young woman. Only he and Bob, an old acquaintance, know what really happened and they have resolved to keep it that way. But one rainy night, years later, Bob appears at Nathan's door with terrifying news, and old wounds are suddenly reopened, threatening to tear Nathan's whole world apart. Because Nathan has his own secrets now. Secrets that could destroy everything he has fought to build. And maybe Bob doesn't realise just how far Nathan will go to protect them ...
Christmas 1997: Nathan works as a gofer on a radio phone-in show hosted by Mark Derbyshire, a one-time celebrity DJ whose star has now faded. Stuck in a humilating job, Nathan also suspects his girlfriend, Sara, is cheating on him, so when Mark's annual Z-list celebrity Christmas party comes around and Sara begs him to take her along, Nathan decides to spend his savings on cocaine and have one final party before dumping her. At the party however, Nathan bumps into Bob, a Phd student he'd first met while living in a squat over 4 years earlier, when Bob interviewed Nathan's housemate for his thesis on ghosts and they meet Elise, a local girl up for a good time. Bob, Nathan and Elise decide to ditch the party and use Bob's car to host a sex and drugs party of their own, but something goes wrong and Elise is killed. 10 years later, Bob re-enters Nathan's life to tell him that building work is taking place in the area where they buried Elise's body, only to discover that Nathan has additional secrets of his own that he'd go to any lengths to protect ...
Part thriller, part supernatural ghost story, this novel didn't work as either. Nathan is an unsympathetic character - directionless, weak-willed, he drifts from situation to situation, too weak to take charge of his life - and when he finally does so, it's for selfish reasons and involves forcing himself into the lives of the one group of people he has no right to contact. He justifies this in the belief that he is helping to heal both them and himself, but there's little to suggest what he actually provides in atonement beyond being there. By contrast, Bob is little more than a cypher on the page - the only personal details he's given come right at the end, when it's too late to care, and his constant vague creepiness, leaves the reader in no doubt as to what happened between him and Elise.
The ghostly elements weren't creepy enough to care about, amounting to visions of the dead girl (which seemed more like manifestations of guilt) and Bob's claims to have caught her voice on video tape. The ghost storyline lacks suspense and tension and if th eintent is to cast doubt on what's really happening between Nathan and Bob then it doesn't work.
In terms of a thriller, the only surprise is that anyone believes Nathan's half-baked stories and explanations. His wife Holly, seems to accept almost everything at face-value, subject to one minor hissy-fit that she later backs down from. Even Holly's friend, Jacki, a policewoman with more than enough reason to suspect that Nathan's hiding something, doesn't see fit to dig any deeper than needs be for the flimsiest of reasons.
Cross's background as a scriptwriter is self-evident - the novel is very dialogue intensive, often running to a couple of pages and usually without dialogue tags. Although it moves the plot along, it does little to build character (and is mostly limited to conveying facts). It also reinforced what a slim novel this is, and although I received my copy for free, I would definitely feel annoyed if I'd paid the £12.99 asking price for it to discover vast chunks of single line dialogue.
In short, this isn't a book I'd particularly recommend. It passes the time, but so do a lot of other books.
The Verdict:
Disappointing thriller chiller that fails to thrill and fails to chill. Unsympathetic and unconvincing characterisation together with well-sign posted plot twists fail make for a ho-hum story that fails to hold the interest.
Nathan has never been able to forget the worst night of his life: the party that led to the sudden, shocking disappearance of a young woman. Only he and Bob, an old acquaintance, know what really happened and they have resolved to keep it that way. But one rainy night, years later, Bob appears at Nathan's door with terrifying news, and old wounds are suddenly reopened, threatening to tear Nathan's whole world apart. Because Nathan has his own secrets now. Secrets that could destroy everything he has fought to build. And maybe Bob doesn't realise just how far Nathan will go to protect them ...
Christmas 1997: Nathan works as a gofer on a radio phone-in show hosted by Mark Derbyshire, a one-time celebrity DJ whose star has now faded. Stuck in a humilating job, Nathan also suspects his girlfriend, Sara, is cheating on him, so when Mark's annual Z-list celebrity Christmas party comes around and Sara begs him to take her along, Nathan decides to spend his savings on cocaine and have one final party before dumping her. At the party however, Nathan bumps into Bob, a Phd student he'd first met while living in a squat over 4 years earlier, when Bob interviewed Nathan's housemate for his thesis on ghosts and they meet Elise, a local girl up for a good time. Bob, Nathan and Elise decide to ditch the party and use Bob's car to host a sex and drugs party of their own, but something goes wrong and Elise is killed. 10 years later, Bob re-enters Nathan's life to tell him that building work is taking place in the area where they buried Elise's body, only to discover that Nathan has additional secrets of his own that he'd go to any lengths to protect ...
Part thriller, part supernatural ghost story, this novel didn't work as either. Nathan is an unsympathetic character - directionless, weak-willed, he drifts from situation to situation, too weak to take charge of his life - and when he finally does so, it's for selfish reasons and involves forcing himself into the lives of the one group of people he has no right to contact. He justifies this in the belief that he is helping to heal both them and himself, but there's little to suggest what he actually provides in atonement beyond being there. By contrast, Bob is little more than a cypher on the page - the only personal details he's given come right at the end, when it's too late to care, and his constant vague creepiness, leaves the reader in no doubt as to what happened between him and Elise.
The ghostly elements weren't creepy enough to care about, amounting to visions of the dead girl (which seemed more like manifestations of guilt) and Bob's claims to have caught her voice on video tape. The ghost storyline lacks suspense and tension and if th eintent is to cast doubt on what's really happening between Nathan and Bob then it doesn't work.
In terms of a thriller, the only surprise is that anyone believes Nathan's half-baked stories and explanations. His wife Holly, seems to accept almost everything at face-value, subject to one minor hissy-fit that she later backs down from. Even Holly's friend, Jacki, a policewoman with more than enough reason to suspect that Nathan's hiding something, doesn't see fit to dig any deeper than needs be for the flimsiest of reasons.
Cross's background as a scriptwriter is self-evident - the novel is very dialogue intensive, often running to a couple of pages and usually without dialogue tags. Although it moves the plot along, it does little to build character (and is mostly limited to conveying facts). It also reinforced what a slim novel this is, and although I received my copy for free, I would definitely feel annoyed if I'd paid the £12.99 asking price for it to discover vast chunks of single line dialogue.
In short, this isn't a book I'd particularly recommend. It passes the time, but so do a lot of other books.
The Verdict:
Disappointing thriller chiller that fails to thrill and fails to chill. Unsympathetic and unconvincing characterisation together with well-sign posted plot twists fail make for a ho-hum story that fails to hold the interest.
