Synopsis:
July 1995. April and Eddie have taken a wrong turn. They’re looking for the small resort town where they plan to spend their honeymoon. When they spot what appears to be a lone hitchhiker along the deserted road, they stop to help. But not long after the hitchhiker gets into their car, they see the blood seeping from her jacket and a truck barrelling down Atticus Lane after them.
When the hitchhiker dies at the local hospital, April and Eddie find themselves in the crosshairs of the Coldlake Falls police. Unexplained murders have been happening along Atticus Line for years and the cops finally have two witnesses who easily become their only suspects. As April and Eddie start to dig into the history of the town and that horrible stretch of road to clear their names, they soon learn that there is something supernatural at work, something that could not only tear the town and its dark secrets apart, but take April and Eddie down with it all.
Review:
Firstly, a big thank you to Michael Joseph for my Arc of Murder Road! Pick it up in UK bookshops from March 28th
In my opinion, there are fewer greater feelings than going into something with low to medium expectations, just to have those expectations blown out of the water. ‘Murder Road’, through its liquid prose and thoroughly engaging story, achieves precisely that.
I should clarify that my lower expectations for this novel have nothing to do with Simone St. James or the book’s premise, I’m just not typically much of a reader of thrillers or books marketed in that vein – there are so many books out there to prioritise! Fortunately for me Simone St. James finds a fantastic balance between the thrills and mystique surrounding the mystery and crime at the heart of the novel, and the horror of the mystery that punctuates the story with life and impetus.
The story surrounds newly-wed couple April and Eddie, as their honeymoon comes to an unfortunate and inopportune ending when they pick up an injured hitchhiker, only for the hitchhiker to die on the way to the hospital. The story surrounds the newly-wed couple’s attempts to unravel the story and mystery of the murder, but they also tackle so much more than that. For reasons unclear to the two of them at first, it seems as if the local detectives are determined to pin the murders on them. I thought Eddie and April’s interactions with the detectives were some of the most intriguing and useful sections in the book, particular in regards to developing April as the main protagonist. April is smart and deceivingly battle hardened, and these attributes shine through with how she intelligently navigates through her interactions with the persistent and sly detectives.
The couple have an interesting dynamic, particularly as, by general standards, the two have not known each other particularly long for a married couple. As the story unravels, the lies are revealed and the secrets laid bare, there is the potential for a relationship, built on relatively new foundations, to shake and break down when the going gets tough. I will not spoil how Eddie and April’s relationship develops, but it certainly does develop as the stakes get higher and the pressure builds, Their relationship was one of the highlights of the story for me.
The crux of the story is the mystery of Atticus Lane and its history of unsolved murders. Simone St. James is successful in making a simple road seem scary and intimidating, and that is a testament to both her quality of writing, and just how thrilling and memorable the beginning of the novel is. The scene where Eddie and April pick up the hitchhiker is genuinely chilling, and this creates emotional scars that are torn open whenever we return to Atticus Lane at later points in the novel.
The story has all of the unpredictable twists and turns that you, ironically, might expect from a story of this genre, and a set of memorable main and side characters to match. I have not even mentioned Rose! All of this to say, the thrills and plot twists that exist in the story are great, but it is the character relations that Simone St. James builds that makes the novel great. If you are looking for your next thriller that seamlessly blends in moments of horror, and has a cast of fully-fledged and memorable characters to boot, then be sure to pick up ‘Murder Road’.
Leave a Reply