Sixteen Horses

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Het verhaal las voor mij heel verwarrend. De tijdsprongen en de wisselende perspectieven maken het er niet duidelijker op. De schrijver maakt geen woorden vuil aan mooie volzinnen en ingewikkeld taalgebruik. Ik ga ervan uit dat hij zijn lezers wil schokken. When I read the synopsis for Sixteen Horses I was not sure that I could read it - animal violence is something that I find hard to stomach. When I received this gifted copy from MacMillan Australia my husband grabbed it and said he would read and review it for me.... so here are his thoughts: Dark, visceral and disturbing, this highly suspenseful and beautifully written thriller is totally gripping from start to finish. A hugely impressive debut.”

Unlike anything else you’ll read this year, Sixteen Horses is a deeply disconcerting ride. Irresistible From its grizzly opening onwards, Greg Buchanan’s debut Sixteen Horses owes much more to the British gothic tradition than to crime fiction. There is, on the surface a crime to be solved, and two investigators. But that investigation, for the most part, is just an excuse to get under the skin of the setting and the cruel and violent secrets that it holds.As the police start their investigations into the sixteen horses heads that were buried in a field, darl secrets start to emerge around the local community. The story is not easy to follow. The timeline and narratives jump around. The characters are well developed and believable. The pace is steady but the storyline is hard to read due to the frequent references to animal abuse. But there's something intriguing that keeps you reading. There's plenty of twists to keep you guessing. The story covers: animal abuse, revenge, guilt, punishment and trauma. In a small town in England, local police detective Alec Nichols finds a gruesome sight: sixteen horse heads, severed from their bodies, each buried meticulously with one eye to the sky on a small rural farm. He calls in a forensic veterinarian, a young woman named Cooper Allen, to help solve this crime - really, just classified as a "property crime" although the act is so despicable. Cooper has seen her fair share of animals being treated horribly, and her main motivation through her work is to save animals from their owners. The claustrophobic foreboding that has been created by the author was simply brilliant. The sounds, the description of the town and its people, the atmospheric thrill give a gothic vibe that was mind-blowing. But there were parts of the story, like in the middle, that lost its grip on me. It doesn’t matter thou, honestly, even the unveiling of the mystery didn’t seem important whilst reading, coz the author mesmerizes you with his story-telling. The whole uneasy unsettling dark aura that Greg Buchanan creates in his debut is worth a read and for that alone, I am going with 3.5 stars. Seagulls swooped from roof to roof. Middle-aged couples sat on benches, mostly silent. The air smelt of dust, salt, skin, tobacco.”

Sixteen Horses is the debut literary thriller from an extraordinary talent, Greg Buchanan. For fans of Jane Harper’s The Dry. Alex Michaelides, author of The Silent Patient Original, beautifully written, terrifying and haunting. I won't forget this novel This is one I’d like to read again for the pure joy of it. Hard to put a tag on it. Noir? Gothic? Thriller? Police procedural? Social commentary?

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Original, beautifully written, terrifying and haunting' - Sophie Hannah, author of Haven't They Grown They were arrested on suspicion of a number of offences including conspiracy to cause public nuisance, obstructing highways and possession of controlled drugs,” officers added.