Stained Summer
By Imogen Ashfield / Spinebreakers Crew
The fairground is usually a place for carefree recreation, roller coasters and candyfloss but the ‘crowds, the noise, the lights’ has a darker side, a ‘madness’ seeping into the daytime summer haze in Kevin Brooks’ most recent novel ‘Black Rabbit Summer’.
These bunch of sixteen year olds are growing up: relationships and rivalries are at full speed and they all have to face life’s difficulties hard and fast. The heart of the book resonates with a classic Agatha Christie mystery of suspense and mystery with the protagonist Pete forced to play the role of Poirot. He is determined to find out what happened to his best friend Raymond. Pete thinks he is going mad. Everything is going wrong. Times have changed since they were all thirteen and he no longer knows who his real friends are and must use his initiative when he feels no-one else is paying proper attention to the recent disappearance.
However, ‘Black Rabbit Summer’ is so much more as well. It’s a modern tale, which dips in and out of surrealism and imagination. Pete questions the idea of time itself, there is experimentation with hallucinatory drugs and Raymond is sure he can hear his rabbit talk to him…
Teenagers are placed in a twisted, dark and seedy adult world with some genuinely disturbing scenes. Usually I (possibly unfairly) discredit young thriller novels as being too obvious, too cliché, too Poirot…but not this tale which works on numerous levels. Brookes cleverly interweaves adolescent troubles alongside murder mystery themes and techniques making it engaging on all fronts. Pick up this book and you will find yourself avidly reading it in a couple of sittings!