Author:Michael Symmons Roberts
When a teenage couple are found murdered in their car, a boy called Adam Sligo is the only suspect. The letter A is found blazoned on the wall at the murder scene and is soon followed, around town, by the other letters of the alphabet, each immaculately painted in red. What do the letters mean? Is Sligo playing games with the police? Or putting a spell on the town?
Perry Scholes is mixed up in all this from the start: a man haunted by cars and death - and photographic images of both. He trawls the motorways and edgelands listening to police radio, getting to the car-crash or the crime scene before them. He makes a living selling these shots to the papers. He is the one who spots the painted letters, and begins to document their appearances.
As the town is paralysed by fear and paranoia, a vigilante cult emerges, arming itself for the battle against evil. Perry finds himself trapped in a nightmare. A killer is at large, and the alphabetical messages he leaves seem to be personal messages for him.
His corpse-strewn first novel derives its title from St Patrick's habit of inscribing letters on new territory to transform it...the atmosphere of creeping menace kept this heathen reading, simultaneously irked and intrigued
—— Mark Sanderson , Daily TelegraphCrafty, sad and haunting
—— Literary ReviewThe narrative voice turns it from a dark whodunit into something more intriguing. But Roberts never forgets that his principal responsibility is to keep us hooked - and that he does with aplomb
—— Barry Forshaw , Daily ExpressSuitably disturbing and unsettling, and lingers long in the mind
—— Daily MailA cold, existential tale... One of the terrific things the novel offers is his rendering of a town in the grip of a nameless fear
—— ObserverAn intriguing, gripping and highly unconventional crime novel
—— Times Literary SupplementAn impressive novel
—— HeraldStylistically accomplished
—— John Dugdale , Sunday TimesTaylor has a lot of fun with his premise, and readers should too
—— Suzi Feay , Independent on SundayTaylor] creates a vivid, kaleidoscopic world that constantly shifts before the reader's eyes
—— Judith Flanders , Sunday Telegraph