WICKER

This book is something quite remarkable, a novel of ideas and a highly effective thriller.

Its plot combines the hunt for The Wicker Man, a serial killer terrorising Chicago with a consideration of the moral and philosophical issues surrounding reproductive ethics, the possibility of a child created from the DNA of a brutal murderer inheriting the evil characteristics of his father and the corrosive effects of grief and an unanswered desire for retribution on the family of a murder victim.

Guilfoile shows his skill as a novelist, not just a writer of genre fiction, in the way he manages to unite complex philosophical ideas with the fast paced narrative of a conventional thriller without doing either a noticeable disservice.

The quality of his writing is uniformly high with sharp characterisation, frequent and satisfyingly unexpected plot twists and the ending is both brutal, bleak and comes brilliantly out of left field.

Clever, compelling and far more original in its basic premise than the vast majority of thrillers on the market this is one of the best novels I have read this year. On the strength of this book alone Kevin Guilfoile has shown himself to be one of the most promising new talents to emerge in the thriller genre in recent years.