View source for The Low Road by Chris Womersley

{{infobox1
|title=The Low Road
|sort=Low Road, The
|author=Chris Womersley
|reviewer=John Lloyd
|genre=Literary Fiction
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|isbn=9781780870571
|pages=288
|publisher=Quercus
|date=January 2013
|summary=A very dark thriller from this master of gloomy, intelligent fiction.
|cover=1780870574
|aznuk=1780870574
|aznus=B0093LRSRA
}}
Wild is a man on the run.  In a slow, underhand and underwhelming way he is leaving behind danger, mistakes and unhappiness in his past, and has fetched up in a nondescript motel.  However, this is only the beginning, for he is quickly ordered to put his medical training to good use in the case of Lee, when the latter is dumped into his care with a gunshot wound.  Lee, too, is a man on the run - from danger, mistakes and unhappiness in his future.  But this pairing is not the only people running in this pitch-black thriller.

In other hands this could be one of those gritty crime stories with short paragraphs, a rollicking condensation of plot and a right wallop as regards narrative.  Womersley is nowhere near such conventional genre traits, however.  His writing, even with this, his first book, is much more alive and intelligent.  His literary way with adjectives and descriptions slows the reader down, and his lack of speech punctuation adds things to the several small, more dreamy episodes that occur.

That said, there is still a large frisson just when he introduces the third character in his plot - we the reader are complicit in settling into the routine of having chapters that concentrate on the oddly-named Wild, and Lee, and just the mention of another name is ominous.  This is much more of a genre piece than his sophomore effort, the superlative [[Bereft by Chris Womersley|Bereft]], and despite some slightly high-brow literary trappings, there is a plain A-B narrative hidden in plain view.

This mix of smart writing with thriller tendencies and a background of suburbia and rural areas (in some unnamed country where several people have continental European names) will again bring out comparisons with Cormac McCarthy or any other purveyor of dark, masculine, gritty tales.  I can only foresee a time when people speak of Womersley as the pond and not the pebble.  But this book, while very interesting, clever and enjoyable, was not perfect.

I have thought for a good few hours and I can't work out whether it is the right length.  Something tells me the story is one of those punchy, tight little things that could be a fair fewer pages in length.  Something else suggests the pair have such tantalising, and very real, characters, that the way we get the truths they hold could be delayed by a more teasing, playful author.

Still, playful is very much a misnomer where this book is concerned.  Bereft is a word in its vocabulary, and could possibly be an alternative title.  When I speak of an admirable darkness to this book I mean a real stygian gloom with some very hard-hitting scenes, and the end will make many grimace.  With that caveat, I still recommend it.

I must thank the publishers for my review copy.

Another dark literary near-thriller the reader might enjoy is [[The Crime of Julian Wells by Thomas H Cook]] or you could also try [[City of Strangers by Ian Mackenzie]]. You might also like [[The Stoning by Peter Papathanasiou]].

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