Lead Review (No Place to Hide)

• Book: No Place to Hide
• Location: Cambridge, Cornwall, Maze Hill
• Author: J S Monroe

Review Author: tripfiction

4.5*

It is useful to be familiar with the term scopophobia – a persistent fear of being watched or stared at. Adam was at Cambridge studying medicine back in 1998 and a legacy from his student days comes back to haunt him in the present, when he is a successful paediatrician living with his wife Tania and two young children in their Maze Hill house straddling Greenwich/Blackheath.

It has been 24 years since he played Dr Faustus as a student, where he happened to meet stunning Clio who was his introduction to Louis, a cinematographer, who is charting lives of individual students on film, a photographic record of their time at University, if you will. A fellow undergraduate is clear that Adam should steer well clear of Louis, but given the lure of being on film – bringing proximity to Clio – he struggles to heed the advice. At a party he experiences a life changing event.

In the present Adam is doing fine, but his wife is struggling with being a mother, and then, one day, down at the park, she takes her eye off Freddie, their son, who disappear. He is soon returned to the fold by someone who proves to be very familiar. A surprise encounter, or perhaps not. It is exactly 24 years since Adam’s time at Cambridge and once he clocks that, he knows that something is coming at him to disrupt his life. Exactly what that might be, he has no idea. There are parallels with the story of Dr Faustus, which if you know the bare bones of that classic, you will have a greater appreciation of the modern story within these pages.

Of course, his life is disrupted significantly as he asks his old University friend Ji to help him understand the full nature of the hard-to-access areas of the internet, which is clearly central to his current predicament. In parts, the story is far fetched but the author holds the past and present strands together well and the whole construct makes for a gripping and very readable novel. It is the Lead Title for publishers, Head of Zeus.

This is the third novel I have read within the last couple of weeks that has, in part at least, a theme of reality TV/video surveillance at its heart and, goodness, the future is potentially bleak. There is already a sense of some of the things highlighted in all the novels already happening and although they are all heart pumping narratives, they also leave a dispiriting aftertaste.

A good choice for anyone who loves #darkacademia and the darkness of the web.

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