Book Review of Breakneck Point by T. Orr Munro

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A thriller with two heroines and several villains

I am giving a five-star recommendation to a novel which I found difficult to read at times. Why? Well, because it gives an insight into a criminal justice system which has evolved to an unscientific state where it is normally only capable of detecting and convicting stupid people. Now, criminologists patiently tell us that most criminals are amazingly stupid. The trouble with that little factoid is that huge numbers of completely innocent persons are also a bit stupid at times, which means that they are all too easily convicted by a system which, by and large, does not believe in clever criminals, let alone scientifically-minded ones, and whose own concept of “forensic science” revolves around a determination to introduce “single particle evidence” to increase, rather than improve, the conviction rate, ignoring that it’s an axiom of science that a single particle proves nothing. A conviction rate bolstered by wrongful convictions can only be improved by being reduced.

This novel is difficult to read at times because the primary villain is a clever and calculating necrophiliac murderer who lies, skilfully and also sadistically in pretty well every conversation he joins and the minor villains are senior police officers who apply Lardarse’s Razor to every conundrum, whereby the conclusion that leads to the path of least thought and effort is always reached. The tension in the plot, and there’s a lot of it, derives from the way the clever necrophiliac interacts with institutionally-irrational senior police officers to constantly ratchet up the scale of the disaster afflicting the primary heroine and several other innocents. And this strikes a chord with me, as it will with many other readers, because you cannot live in the modern world and not know, or know about, policemen like this. There is also a well-drawn secondary villain whose most devastating tactic against those victims he seeks to destroy is to marry them. He, too, will strike a chord with many readers. It’s the grains of truth which make this novel both compelling and uncomfortable.

The author knows her stuff and she knows the Devon landscape the story is set in. She knows terrifying truths about teenage girls and isn’t afraid to tell them. The story is well-told but not gently told. The solution is as shocking as it is surprising, but it is well crafted around the limitations of the senior investigating officer.

 

Breakneck Point by T. Orr Munro is published in the UK by HQ on the 14^th of April 2022.