Review: KILLING WAYS by Alex Barclay

Ren Bryce, the Denver-based FBI agent with the ‘Safe Streets’ programme, returns in Alex Barclay’s seventh novel, Killing Ways (Harper Collins, €16.99). A particularly vicious serial killer is targeting women in Denver, but Ren, bi-polar and off her meds in order to stay sharp, may not be the best person to lead the investigation. There’s a raw intimacy to Barclay’s portrayal of Ren Bryce, given that we’re privy to the self-torturing Ren’s unfiltered thought process, an intimacy that becomes all the more charged when we discover that she is chasing the killer who first appeared in Barclay’s debut, Dark House (2005). The most remarkable aspect of the novel, however, is the degree to which Barclay forces the reader to consider the consequences of brutal murder – indeed, there’s an element of horror in the brutal poetry that describes not only the victims’ remains, but the reasons why the killer is possessed of such savagery. ~ Declan Burke

  This review was first published in the Irish Times.

To The Castle Born

I had an interview with Alex Barclay published in the Irish Times yesterday to mark the arrival of her new YA novel, CURSE OF KINGS (HarperCollins Children’s Books). It goes a lot like this:

It’s fair to say that Alex Barclay’s reputation precedes her. Formerly a fashion journalist, the Irish crime writer burst onto the international crime writing scene in 2006 with the bestseller Dark House, a novel celebrated for its exploration of the brutal aspects of human nature. The 39-year-old has subsequently published four more adult crime novels, but her new offering, Curse of Kings, is an epic quest written for young adults.
  “I was a little concerned about someone not buying a book for their child because it’s written by a crime writer,” says Alex. “And everyone said, ‘No, crime writers who write even darker stuff than you write for children too.’ So that,” she laughs, “is kind of reassuring.”
  Subtitled ‘The Trials of Oland Born’, Curse of Kings tells the tale of 14-year-old Oland, factotum to the evil Villius Ren, usurper of the good King Micah of the Kingdom of Decressian. Humiliated and abused on a daily basis, Oland finally snaps and sets out on the journey that will, a mysterious letter informs him, lead him to his destiny.
  Alex cites her childhood reading of Enid Blyton as the strongest influence on Curse of Kings.
  “My favourite books of hers would have been The Enchanted Wood and The Faraway Tree series. In terms of what stayed with me, it’s very definitely mysteries and secrets and exotic locations. I recently found some of my ‘early writings’, from between the ages of four and nine, they were all in our attic at home – what a laugh! But sure enough, they were all stories about caves, and secret things far away, and mysterious people acting strange.
  “This book was probably written for myself, aged 14,” she continues. “The escapism and the strangeness of it all would have been amazing to me then, but the magical elements would have been great too. I just love, as a reader, not questioning that kind of fantasy. And as a writer, that’s great – it’s not rooted in the ‘gritty realism’ of crime fiction, you just have to let go and not question it all too much. I would never have questioned it as a child, and I think I’ve never lost that ability.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …