Narrated by Michael Simkins.
Released 1st August 2021 by Isis Audio.
From the cover:
Behind the normal door of a normal house, in a normal street, two men are slowly driving each other insane. One of them is a psychopath.The father: Mr Todd is at his wits' end. He's been robbed of his job as a tax inspector and is now stuck at home...with him. Frustrated. Lonely. Angry. Really angry.
The son: Adrian has no job, no friends. He is at home all day, obsessively chopping vegetables and tap-tap-tapping on his computer. And he's getting worse, disappearing for hours at a time, sneaking off to who-knows-where.
The unholy spirit: In the safety of suburbia, one man has developed a taste for killing. And he'll kill again.
**********************
Meet Mr Todd, trapped in his bungalow in a heatwave with his jobless, obsessive-compulsive son Adrian - both of them seemingly driving each other to distraction.
The story unfolds through the eyes of Mr Todd, as he muses on the events of the past that have brought him to this dead-end existence, cutting back and forth between his attempts to rationalise his feelings of resentment and rage, by going over them again and again in his private journal, and the events that play out during the heatwave.
At the beginning it seems to be the story of a frustrated and lonely man, who I would probably describe as a 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' type - boorish and old fashioned, but otherwise a normal man living a normal life. It appears Mr Todd has been left in sole charge of a son with no prospects and potentially dangerous behaviour traits through no fault of his own, and it is up to him to make sure he does not stray from the straight and narrow.
However, as Mr Todd senior regales us with the account of how the world has done him wrong, and goes into minute detail about the many crosses he has to bear, it slowly begins to dawn on you that things might not be quite as they appear.
I can't go into too much about what happens in the story without giving the game away, which I really do not want to do as the journey towards the truth played out in a delicious and addictive slow-burn that kept me spellbound. However, I can tell you that this tale goes to some unexpectedly dark and disturbing places, and delves into 'birth of a monster' country in a way that will chill you to the bone. The structure of the story is masterful, with all the little jigsaw pieces you need to put together the full, horrifying picture being dropped ever so gradually - sometimes in the form of little asides that you do not realise the full importance of until much later down the line - and all the cleverly conceived threads tie together beautifully at the end with a macabrely fitting ending.
This is exactly the kind of novel that is made to be consumed in audio format. The narration by Michael Simkins is absolutely first-class - convincingly conveying the claustrophobic atmosphere, the never-ending oppressive heat, and the warped relationships in this suburban bungalow so well that the pent up rage, frustration and paranoia are almost unbearable. I think I should add that this serves to make this one of the most unsettling audio books I have ever had the pleasure of listening to - one to relax with at bedtime this is certainly not!
I thoroughly enjoyed being frozen to the core by Iain Maitland's little gem of a psychopath tale, even if I did need a lie down in a well lit room afterwards (no dark spaces being craved after that ending!). If you like your thrills to be of the delectably unpredictable and profoundly unnerving kind, then this will definitely be one for you.
Mr Todd's Reckoning is available to buy now in audio, paperback and ebook formats from your favourite book retailer.
Thank you to Isis Audio for sending me an audio copy of this book in return for an honest review and to Danielle Price at The Reading Closet for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
No comments:
Post a Comment