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When it rains… it really rains.
A few acres under water underwater and several thousand families are displaced. Permanently.
Scale that up.
Quinn is an auditor. His job is to head out to the place deemed suitable for Development with a capital D: the next place deemed worthy of having cash poured into it so that it can accept that next (tidal) wave of internal migrants from the flooded areas. Once there, he is to check the records, carry out a nominal environmental audit, and generally ensure that there isn't anything embarrassing to be found later that might speak against the central government plans to buy up the land, seal off the dumps, build the housing, and just generally sell the brave new world and bright new future to a population who have had too much to bear over the course of the last generation.
On this occasion, he gets lost only a couple of miles from his destination, beds down for the night in the clapped-out car he's been allowed to use, and is woken in the morning by the drainage diggers from the hill. This is his first encounter with the un-named unnamed town that provides his latest assignment. The people are suspicious. In both senses of the word.
Anna Laing is a vet working for the Ministry of Agriculture. There aren't any farm animals any more. Not live ones anyway. Her job is to make the burial sites safe. When the last outbreak of foot and mouth was followed by anthrax, virtually all livestock was slaughtered and buried. Anthrax can survive in the soil. It wasn't the best of plans, but the best that could be managed 20 or 50 or so years back. Now her team have to go in, exhume the bodies and the earth around them and burn what's left. They try not to think about the smoke and what gets blown away on the wind. Anna has seen what anthrax does. She worries. But when the burn is done, they'll shut the site down, cap it off, cover it in concrete and declare is safe for building.
Meanwhile , the town stalwarts – Greer runs ''Administration'', Stearn controls ''security'' – do their best to line their pockets and provide the necessary to the local Padre who has dreams of raising a new cathedral, and the town realists warn about the major floods of half a century ago and how they could return, or lament the death and compulsory purchase of the family farm, or simply do their best working at the garage and trying to hold the family together.
It is a bleak future that Edric paints, but populated by people who react exactly as people do, it is a believable one.
Quinn struggles to find out what is really going on in town, befriending Anna, and the locals, whilst simultaneously dealing with the politics of his own department. Secrets and lies. Corruption. And in amongst it people trying to do good, or salvage a little dignity or compassion or something in a world that shouldn't be this way.
Stylistically, Edric has it cracked. He writes with an immediate tension, that doesn't let up from the very first page. How we got to where we are simply , emerges from the action. You have to pay attention and work it out for yourself. There isn't a word wasted on unnecessary explanation. He understands the ''newspeak'' that is already prevalent in the corridors of power and allows his characters to mock it as they describe themselves as ''facilitators'' and wonder about ''deliverology strategies'', ''Gold Alert procedures'' and eventualities, unconfirmables and consequentials.
It all sounds very, frighteningly real. Even more so, when a character sums up everything that has happened towards the end: ''it rained, that's all''.
I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to The Bookbag.
If this book appeals then you might also enjoy [[The Pesthouse by Jim Crace]]. We've also enjoyed [[Field Service by Robert Edric]].
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