The Truth By Peter James
About ten years ago I met Peter James in Dillons book store in central Manchester. I was wandering around and decided to head into the bookstore, and was looking around for the horror section, when in walked this jolly curly headed chap and asked an assistant if they had a horror section. Off he went upstairs, so I followed, and it turns out he was there to do a book signing – I bought a couple of his books and he signed them, and we had a chat about writing.
At the time I was in a real writer stuck in a garret situation and was working on a doomed horror novel (well, I now know it was doomed, but I had high hopes for it once), and we talked about the crowded markets and the competition, and he told me it was pretty hard to break in with a first novel. Things have changed quite a lot since then, and while self-publishing opportunities flourish, it’s probably harder than ever to break into the mainstream, and while some writers make it big, others flounder. It’s quite strange that in a world where a horror writer is the world’s bestselling writer, publishers don’t consider there to be a market for new horror writers, or even most of the existing ones (writers are losing their publishers all the time). The relevance of this? Well, Peter James has recently turned away from horror and has been adventuring with crime novels – a shame, since he has a knack for writing damn good horror novels, like The Truth.
When the bank pulls the plug, John and Susan Carter have thirty one days to find one and a half million pounds, or they will lose everything, their home, their business, everything they’ve worked for. Then out of the blue steps Mr Sarotzini, who offers to solve all their problems on just one condition: Susan must be the father of his child. But who is the mysterious Mr Sarotzini, and why does everyone who asks end up dead? How come he knows so much about the Carters? Why does Susan’s prgnancy hurt so much…
In a novel filled with questions, it is indeed a long time before we learn the truth, but in the meantime the story takes us on a rollercoaster of a ride with some well rounded characters, some subtle plotting, and action that carries the reader along through a chilling, unlikely, yet ultimately plausible nightmare that owes only a little of its chill to the supernatural. Most of the horror comes from very human evil, and I won’t be forgetting the inimitable Kundz for a while – a truly nasty character, capable of some very twisted love 