panik | Review: Buried by Neil Cross.

Another book to review courtesy of

simon_saysuk to whom, many thanks.

So, Burial. It’s certainly a page turner, I read it in three days. :o)

A claustrophobic thriller about a death that literally haunts a young and relatively innocent young man and his hideous friend, a PhD student and paranormal investigator. Nathan, the protagonist, deals with what’s happened and makes a life despite everything – in fact, he makes a rather good life, a life that, had the death had never happened, would not have come about. Can he deal with the implications of that knowledge?

I could see how the paranormal shades would come to colour the book, in fact, I was expecting rather more of it than we got but the twist at end came as a real surprise to me - maybe that’s because I don’t read or watch many thrillers.:o) It's not a genre that generally appeals to me and this is not a book I would likely have picked off the shelf myself. It certainly read as though the author had the TV market in mind.

The quality of the writing is often a little shaky with repetition and a goodly number of clichés, but if a darn good plot is all you need, then this is a darn good plot reasonably well executed and will keep you turning the pages for sure. I enjoyed it very much and if you're looking for a darker-than-average plane/train/beach read, I'd certainly rec this without reservation.

Review cross-posted to Amazon and Goodreads.