Tom Vowler - What Lies Within

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent book

I thought this was an excellent book. It is well written, intelligent, courageous in the subject matter it tackles and for me utterly gripping.

This is mis-categorised as a crime thriller. It is the story of a terrible crime and its effects on all concerned both immediately afterward and as their lives develop. It really isn't a thriller even though there is some well-executed and genuinely frightening threat later in the book, and it is extremely tense much of the time. Chiefly, it is a thoughtful and insightful study of character and of how it may develop.

This may make it sound worthy and dull, but it isn't. It's terrifically readable and very involving, and I found I was as hooked as by any really good thriller. The narrative is excellently structured and paced, the characters well drawn and very believable and the sense of place on Dartmoor exceptionally well done. Tom Vowler has the sense not to spell everything out, so that the crime itself isn't described at all, just its effects and the victim's actions, thoughts and feelings (or lack of them) told in plain, un-hysterical language which makes it all the more powerful and disturbing. The passages detailing a medical examination, for example, were completely calmly told yet left me almost trembling.

Vowler's prose is excellent: expressive but unobtrusive and wholly lacking in melodrama so that you are simply drawn into the story and carried along by it. He gets small details exactly right so that dialogue is completely natural, like the way that medical staff use the verb "to pop" - "pop this gown on," "pop your feet into the stirrups" - without clunkily drawing attention to it, which makes the whole thing completely real. This aspect is excellent throughout.

This is one of the best books I have read for some time. Warmly recommended to anyone who likes an thoughtful, intelligent and thoroughly gripping read.