Down Cemetery Road by Mick Herron (English) Paperback Book

Description: Down Cemetery Road by Mick Herron One quiet evening in Oxford, a house near Sarah Tuckers explodes. The reported cause is a gas leak, but when a little girl disappears in the aftermath, Sarah-a young married woman, bored with her life-becomes obsessed with finding her. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description One quiet evening in idyllic Oxford, England, a house in Sarah Tuckers neighborhood explodes. The reported cause is a gas leak, but when a little girl disappears in the aftermath, Sarah--a young woman who is bored with domestic married life--becomes obsessed with finding her.CWA Gold Dagger winner Mick Herrons debut novel introduces Sarah Tucker, whose search for a missing child unravels a murderous conspiracy.When a house explodes in a quiet Oxford suburb and a girl disappears in the aftermath, Sarah Tucker-a young married woman, bored and unhappy with domestic life-becomes obsessed with finding her. Accustomed to dull chores in a childless household and hosting her husbands wearisome business clients for dinner, Sarah suddenly finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew as her investigation reveals that people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living are fast joining the dead. What begins in a peaceful neighborhood reaches its climax on a remote, unwelcoming Scottish island as the search puts Sarah in league with a man being hunted down by murderous official forces. Author Biography Mick Herronis a British novelist and short story writer who was born in Newcastle and studied English at Oxford. He is the author of six books in the Slough House series (Slow Horses,Dead Lions,Real Tigers,Spook Street,London Rules, and the novellaThe List) and four Oxford mysteries (Down Cemetery Road,The Last Voice You Hear,Why We Die, andSmoke and Whispers), as well as the standalone novelsReconstruction,Nobody WalksandThis Is What Happened. His workhas won the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel, the Steel Dagger for Best Thriller,and the Ellery Queen Readers Award, andbeen nominated for the Macavity, Barry, Shamus, and Theakstons Novel of the Year Awards. He currently lives in Oxford and writes full-time. Review Praise for Down Cemetery Road "[Herrons] first novel, Down Cemetery Road, begins with the funniest dinner party scene I have ever read, and then, after a nearby explosion, shifts into thriller territory." —Los Angeles Review of Books "Good characterization, dialogue and well-paced narrative make this confident first novel frighteningly plausible." —The Daily Telegraph"[Down Cemetery Road] shifts from domesticity with violence and private detectives—initially seeming something like Kate Atkinsons detective novels in both the quality of the writing and the lightness of tone—to something like Christopher Brookmyre at his best . . . Herron is a major writer of considerable wit and talent." —International Noir FictionPraise for Mick Herron"Mick Herron never tells a suspense story in the expected way."—The New York Times Book Review"Stylish and engaging."—The Washington Post"A superb thriller . . . Herron may be the most literate, and slyest, thriller writer in English today." Review Quote Praise for Down Cemetery Road "Good characterization, dialogue and well-paced narrative make this confident first novel frighteningly plausible." --Daily Telegraph Praise for Mick Herron "Mick Herron never tells a suspense story in the expected way." --The New York Times Book Review "Stylish and engaging." --Washington Post Excerpt from Book When he opened his eyes he expected to find all the light squeezed from the world, but no: he was alive still, strapped to a bed in a sterile room, angry red claws of pain scratching channels in his flesh. They have tied me down to keep me from shredding myself, he managed, in a moment of clarity. To prevent me ripping the skin from my bones, and not stopping until Im dead. This was a good thought: it pretended they had his welfare in mind. But the pain remained, like being chewed by fire-ants, and even when he slept he felt it working in his dreams. In his dreams, he was back in the desert. His companions were dead soldiers, their meat dropping off their bones. The loudest thing in life was a helicopter. All around, the boy soldiers disintegrated; made puddles in the sand. Here, when he was awake, there were other noises to occupy him. Outside his room, he imagined a long corridor of swept tiles and white light; an echoey tunnel that carried sounds past his door, some of which lingered to mock his boredom. A dropped fork rattled in his mind for hours. He heard voices, too, a low mumble that never separated into language, and once he thought he heard Tommy; thought he recognized a man he knew in a noise mostly animal: a rising scream, cut off by a slammed door. Footsteps clattered into distance. Something on wheels might have been a trolley. He tried to shout a response, but his voice got lost in the deep red caverns of his pain, and all he could do was weep silent tears that scorched his cheeks. A doctor came once a day. He had to be a doctor: he wore a white coat. The nurse with him carried a tray; on it, a precise array of tools--different-sized needles, small bottles of coloured liquids. Both nurse and doctor wore gloves and surgical masks, and both had olive skin and hazel eyes. Only the doctor spoke. His sentences were short and to the point: Breathe in. Breathe out. I take blood now. Even without the mask, hed hardly have been fluent. It was another clue to his whereabouts . . . Not all the needles were for him, so he knew he wasnt alone here; there were other rooms, other patients, though patients wasnt the word he meant. Prisoners, his mind supplied. He was a prisoner here, though where here was, he couldnt be sure. The doctor said, "Sleep now." As if it were a magic instruction, and he was a rabbit being put back into a hat. The nurse, though, was beautiful, as nurses have to be. The nurse came more often and fed him, wiped him, saw to his bowel movements. Nothing he did made her speak. Even an erection, to him little short of a miracle, left her unmoved. For the rest, all he had were a few schoolboy phrases-- Parley voo? Spreckledy Doitch? --which it wouldnt have helped him if shed answered. And anyway he knew, was certain, that if she spoke it would be in a sand language, whose vast syllables would leave him adrift and uncomprehending, like a traveller caught between settlements. Soon, he forgot she was human. When he didnt want to see her, he turned his face to the wall. Days passed. There was no way of knowing how many. His body was healing, but slowly: red weals marred all his flesh he could see, and a small detached part of his mind--his black box--told him hed always be like this now; that his body was scarred and monstrous for ever, but at least the pain was dimming. He was no longer kept strapped down. An ankle-chain secured him to the bed. In time, he might do something about that. Once, he stole a spoon during a careless moment; filched it from the tray when the nurse looked round at a noise from the corridor. He hid it under the mattress, but within the hour theyd come to fetch it--three of them: male, silent, dark-featured. Two held him against the wall while the third retrieved his prize, though not roughly. He didnt struggle. But the effort exhausted him anyway, and he crashed as soon as theyd left. His dream took him back to the desert and the boy soldiers. Sand crunched as he fell from the truck, and the choppers whine was the loudest noise in the world. And the boys were melting again, their faces turning runny while his black box recorded it calmly, noting that its like watching a very wet painting hung in the wind --but he was sweating when he woke, and sure hed been screaming. There was nobody to tell him if that were true. Just as there was nobody to tell him if it were night or day. Hed have sold his soul for a window. For natural light. And then one day--he had an idea it might be the winter; there was a cold bite to the air--they took him out of the room. The same three men came to secure him to the bed. He was blindfolded and taken through the door, down the corridor hed only imagined; wheeled past--he was sure of this--windows, from which light fell on to his face in a gentle strobe. He racked his body against the bed, but remained locked in place. When they removed the blindfold, he was in what looked like an operating theatre. The doctor was there, masked, suited up, and had the three interns--guards--untie him and fasten him in what resembled an open coffin. Because he thought they were going to kill him at last, he didnt struggle. But instead he was loaded into a large mechanical device, of a kind he might have seen in hospital films. Some kind of scanning machine. He was kept there for twenty minutes or so. The noise was constant but not too loud, like knowing there were bees nearby. He almost fell asleep. Afterwards the doctor said, "Good." He was strapped down again, eyes covered, and wheeled back to his room. Again he felt the windows pass, and his one wish in the world was not even escape, but just to be able to stand in the light, and imagine the wind pulsing against his damaged skin. After that, it became regular. Once every three days, as far as his body could tell . . . There were no other clocks available. That was one of the discoveries hed made: that the body was a kind of clock. It couldnt be rewound, and couldnt be replaced. When it finished telling the time, its job was done . . . Once every three days they took him to the theatre, and scanned him with their device. He never asked a question. This was his plan: for them to forget he was there, and turn their backs for one moment. Even without a spoon, he thought he might win an eye or a tongue. . . . He never knew this, but it was on a Wednesday that it all changed; that he caught his glimpse of the outside world, and found it upside down. He was asleep when the nurse came. Genuinely asleep. The pills did this, along with the blood they took: he never did anything, but often felt weak and sleepy. By the ankle-chain, he was tethered to the bed. She must have thought this enough. Perhaps the others, the men, were having a day off. He never knew. It didnt matter. She wheeled him from the room like that, just the ankle-chain holding him down. It was the movement woke him. Hed been dreaming again--the dream never left him, or perhaps he never left the dream--his head full of boiling faces when he forced his eyes open, the way he always woke. For a moment he thought it hadnt started yet, that he was back in the truck, and instinct tipped him over the side where he hit the floor with a crash of spilled metal. The bed jerked to a halt. And with his gown flapping open, bare-arsed to the world, he lay with a window just two feet above him, its blinds pulled tight against the light, and both his hands untethered. Even then, the nurse didnt speak. She pressed something on her belt instead, though he heard no alarm, and as he reached a hand for the blind, came round to arrest him. He thought shed be soft. She punched the back of his head. It had been a while since hed been hurt quite like that, and he collapsed back to the floor, taking the blind with him. It sounded loud as a helicopter. And then there were feet coming, and a pricking in his arm to send him back into the desert, where he really didnt want to go, not now hed seen the light--not now hed seen the sky, and the treetops, and the arch of the building opposite, with its grey stone scrolls and pigeon shit and everything about it screaming England --but then the needle opened the window in his head, and he flew back to the desert. The light was just the morning sun, building its killing heat. The boy soldiers were dying again, but nobody heard their screams. CHAPTER ONE BHS On discovering a fire, the instructions began, shout Fire and try to put it out. It was useful, heart-of-the-matter advice, and could be extended almost indefinitely in any direction. On discovering your husbands guests are arseholes, shout Arseholes and try to put them out. This was a good starting point. Sarah was one glass of wine away from putting it in motion. But the instructions had been pinned to the wall in her office when shed had a job, and did not apply in the kitchen. Here, Mark would expect that all emergencies be met with predetermined orderliness--crisis management was his Latest Big Thing--and graded instantly by size, type and career-damaging potential: earthquake, conflagration, shortage of pasta. His guests would not figure on the chart, since they came under Acts of God, and were to be borne as such. Of course theyre arseholes, Sare, h Description for Sales People The republication of Mick Herrons debut novel, which was highly praised by the Telegraph when first published. Herrons novel Dead Lions was awarded the 2013 Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel. Dead Lions was also chosen as one of the top 25 best crime novels of the last 25 years in The Times. Good characterisation, dialogue and well-paced narrative make this confident first novel frighteningly plausible. - The Telegraph Details ISBN161695583X Author Mick Herron Year 2015 ISBN-10 161695583X ISBN-13 9781616955830 Media Book Publisher Soho Press Inc Imprint Soho Press Inc Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States DEWEY 823.92 Short Title DOWN CEMETERY ROAD Series Oxford Language English Format Paperback Series Number 1 UK Release Date 2015-03-10 AU Release Date 2015-03-10 NZ Release Date 2015-03-10 US Release Date 2015-03-10 Publication Date 2015-03-10 Audience General Pages 368 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:141754290;

Price: 40.32 AUD

Location: Melbourne

End Time: 2024-12-23T03:17:04.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 AUD