The Road of the Dead (review)

Ruben is fourteen when his older sister, Rachel, is raped and strangled in the countryside when visiting friends far from the family's East London home. He and his older brother, Cole, head to the West Country to find out what happened, so that Rachel's body can be brought back home for burial. Once there, they find a tense and secretive knot of locals clearly hostile to the interlopers ("Either they've all got something to hide, or they're all scared of someone who's got something to hide"); the brothers' persistent investigations, especially combined with Cole's aggressive and often brutal reaction to attempts at intimidation, eventually land them in a maelstrom of extortion, kidnapping, and violence when the powerful forces behind the crime—and the town's fate—move to protect their own interests. This is a chilling and atmospheric story, part mystery (it's not clear exactly why or by whom Rachel was murdered) and part vengeance drama (it's clear that there's culpability throughout the village and that they will have to pay before the brothers get what they want). The protagonists are intriguing and original, with their gypsy background (which helps the brothers gain assistance from a gypsy enclave in the West Country) and outsider sensibilities. While Ruben's ability to sense other people's feelings and experiences sometimes becomes a too-convenient narrative shortcut, it adds a supernatural eerieness, and Cole's simple implacability ensures that there's plenty of nihilistic bleakness on the side of the putative good guys as well as in their opposition. The sustained violence of the final events will be familiar to fans of films by Tarantino or, for those with historic tastes, Peckinpah, and the moral ambiguity of the ending ("Did any of it matter?") will appeal to lovers of noir, making this a useful title for readers seeking the literary equivalent of edgy cinema.