Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan

 

Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan.

Published 29th April 2021 by Mantle.

From the cover of the book:

Near the dying English seaside town of Ilmarsh, local police detective Alec Nichols discovers sixteen horses’ heads on a farm, each buried with a single eye facing the low winter sun. After forensic veterinarian Cooper Allen travels to the scene, the investigators soon uncover evidence of a chain of crimes in the community – disappearances, arson and mutilations – all culminating in the reveal of something deadly lurking in the ground itself.

In the dark days that follow, the town slips into panic and paranoia. Everything is not as it seems. Anyone could be a suspect. And as Cooper finds herself unable to leave town, Alec is stalked by an unseen threat. The two investigators race to uncover the truth behind these frightening and insidious mysteries – no matter the cost.

Sixteen Horses is the debut literary thriller from an extraordinary talent, Greg Buchanan. A story of enduring guilt, trauma and punishment, set in a small seaside community the rest of the world has left behind . . .

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Just outside the decaying seaside town of Ilmarsh, the day after Bonfire Night, the heads of sixteen horses are found buried on a farm - the only indication that they are there is the bizarre sight of a single eye of each horse head positioned to look as if they are peering through the earth in the direction of the low winter sun, accompanied by a pile of severed horse tails.

Police detective Alec Nichols has no idea what to make of this almost ritualistic crime scene, but after forensic veterinary Cooper Allen joins the investigation, together they discover a string of gruesome crimes in this maladjusted community that point to some seriously disturbed goings on... and something far more deadly in the ground than equine remains. 

This is a book that takes you to unsettling places, and Greg Buchanan holds nothing back in his descriptions of dark deeds, depravity, desperation and disturbed relationships. From the word go, Buchanan uses the obvious decline of this town and its surrounding area, the greyness and chill of the weather, and the awkward social interactions of his characters to enhance the feeling that there are some very bad things going on at the heart of this community, and the feeling does not let up once throughout the torturous and terrifying plot.

This is a very intelligent novel that crosses the line somewhere between literary fiction and noir police procedural in rather daring and unusual way. The writing style is disconnected, with short, punchy chapters and interrupted passages that jump between characters (some of whom we are unsure about the identity of) and time frames, before and after the discovery of the horses' heads, which keeps you disoriented and on your toes at all times - sometimes verging into the country of fever dream like vignettes, as events spiral out of control. Often you feel you have no idea what is going on at all, as you progress through the numbered days of the investigation and the story veers around in totally unexpected ways, until the conclusion brings everything into horrifying focus with a clarity that is completely shocking.

It's fair to say that this is a book with a hefty dose of distressing content, especially in the form of animal cruelty, disturbed childhoods, abuse and violence, and I did have to put it to one side on more than one occasion before continuing, but something drew me back each time to compulsively follow the story to the bitter end, and a big part of the attraction is the way Buchanan's characters are all flawed in one way or another - each of them carrying substantial emotional baggage, laced with guilt and shame, and a fatalistic desire that they should be punished for their past sins.

This is definitely a challenging read, but there is gold to be had here among the squalid realms of  human frailty and basest of behaviours, and there is a reason why this book has taken the literary world by storm. I promise you will be haunted by this book for quite some time after you close the covers, but the experience will be worth it.

Sixteen Horses is available to buy now from your favourite book retailer.

Thank you to Greg Buchanan for sending me a copy of this book, in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Greg Buchanan was born in 1989 and lives in the Scottish Borders. He studied English at the University of Cambridge and completed a PhD at King’s College London in identification and ethics. He is a graduate of UEA’s Creative Writing MA. Sixteen Horses is his first novel.

A TV adaptation of Sixteen Horses is being produced by Gaumont Television (Narcos, Tin Star) after a bidding war for the rights. The novel has sold in over seventeen international territories.