Deadlock by Simon Fox
| Deadlock by Simon Fox | |
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| Category: Confident Readers | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A policeman's son is suddenly thrust into the world of criminals both in and out of uniform when his father gets caught up in trouble. It would have been easy to write the hero as chocka with secret agent styled powers, but this feels much more grounded in reality. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 288 | Date: June 2023 |
| Publisher: Nosy Crow | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9781839944420 | |
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It seems a daft thing to say, but the action at the start of this read barely seems to have allowed us to pick the thing up before it's begun. We know so little about our hero and his policeman father, and why the mother is absent, apart from the fact they have a regular Monday evening together, where homework is forsaken and they practise picking locks. Which might just come in handy at some point in the breathless few days that the course of this drama plays out in. For late one night Graham Blake is late back from his shift on the force, and then suddenly rings Archie, demanding he fetch something from a secret place, and join him on the run. They get together, but barely begin to smell the whiff of Southern trains when the father is arrested, leaving Archie on the late express to Brighton, toting a tin his father was determined to keep away from his colleagues, and the bearer of a whole heap of questions.
Once in Brighton, there's little relenting either – the large-ish font helping the pages flick by, the drama heightened throughout, and the engagement strong. The questions just so handily fall into categories relating to Archie's past, and the current situation, and that of someone else he finds to sort of be in cahoots with, a girl of similar age who has come to detest her father's life choices. But what choices has Graham made, or is he really an innocent pawn trapped in a world of international criminality?
This then is a thriller for the ten-to-fourteen category, and the author's second book, after the really distinctive and clever genre piece Running out of Time. This is much less of a high-concept ride, but is a ride all the same. Until Archie speaks of pounds sterling and the Brighton line there was something that made me feel this might even be an American book, as if they have the exclusive rights to anything as exuberant. It takes a kid who does not need to be a superhero (yes, he has to know some tricksy breaking-and-entering skills, but beyond a standard athleticism he is no freak of nature, and indeed he often has to settle on a weird-seeming calming process learnt from therapy) and puts him in something that seems a really strongly-evoked criminal world, that comes across with all the authority and conviction you could wish for, and more intrigue than we might have felt we deserved.
With a proper, audience-respecting level of peril, a ticking countdown that is not overplayed, and a satisfyingly deep pile of trouble for our leads, this is a fine stand-alone thriller drama. There are flashes of moral at the end, when various people talk about how easy it is to cross the line into illegality, and what it might lead to, but this is a young kid in desperate straits and a cleverly composed look at how he tries against all odds to get out of it. It's really satisfying, and for ignoring all possible major flaws it stands as a four and a half star success in my mind. I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
A Thief to Catch a Killer by Kitt Townsend has a junior safe-cracker, too, and shouldn't be too much of a teen read to prevent an overlap in audiences. If you want more adult action on the Brighton line, then turn to Bringing Forth the End of Days by Simon Law.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Deadlock by Simon Fox at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Deadlock by Simon Fox at Amazon.com.
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