I certainly have not given up reading but it has been a few months since I last published a book review. However, I needed to write one for Lowboy, a book which I received a couple of months ago via the LibraryThing early reviewers scheme:
Lowboy by John Wray
7 April, 2009 by Wulf Forrester-Barker
Book ReviewRating: / 5
From the early chapters of Lowboy, I anticipated that this would be a detective thriller; that is what meeting a policeman with a penchant for code-breaking suggests. In that respect, I was disappointed – this isn’t a police procedural or even much of a thriller.
It is, however, a novel of psychology. In particular, it travels through the subterranean thoughts of its eponymous protagonist but also his mother, his “girlfriend” and the detective who is charged with tracking the absent Lowboy down.
It reminded me a little of J D Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”. In the grand scheme of things, not all that much happens but the course of the story does lay a disturbed mind open for examination. For action or detection, look elsewhere but, for a study of some people and their thinking, this work has literary merit.
[hReview]
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