Lead Review
- Book: Hinton Hollow Death Trip
- Location: South East England
- Author: Will Carver
Hinton Hollow Death Trip is a very unusual thriller. The narrator is the Devil… He visits Hinton Hollow, a sleepy village between London and Oxford – and wreaks havoc. Murder and mayhem become the order of the day.
There are two key facts to remember about the Devil. First, he cannot make anyone do anything they are not otherwise tempted to do – he can merely ‘encourage’ people to behave badly. And second, he has great respect for the innocence of children – he leaves them well alone (unless, of course, something goes wrong…).
The Devil (and, quite possibly, Will Carver himself) have a certain disdain for the way humans have developed. We are fat, we are lazy, we act badly, and we think unworthy thoughts. The 5,000+ inhabitants of Hinton Hollow exhibit many of the above traits. They need to be ‘brought to their senses‘ – painful and traumatic as the process is bound to be. An ‘ordinary man’ (a child’s description of the perpetrator) shoots and kills village worthies, and mothers and children on their way home from school. He then just disappears. The police, of course, investigate – but find it hard to tie the disparate strands together. The police operation is led by Detective Pace, recently returned to his home village from a stint in London (which went badly wrong). Right up front the Devil tells us that he has Pace in his sights.
A little like a more conventional thriller, the book moves towards an unexpected denouement – which, of course, makes sense in retrospect. The Devil, though, offers the reader several different possible endings to the book (after the denouement) – you have to choose which seems the most likely to you.
Hinton Hollow Death Trip is a very well constructed and very original thriller. It is also quite scary – in its concept if not its execution. I would certainly recommend it to anyone looking for something a bit different and thought provoking. It is, indeed, a devilish thriller to excite you.
The text is peppered with sayings and pithy thoughts ‘in boxes’ about the Devil and his activities. I found these more than a little distracting from the story itself. I ended up finishing a chapter, and then going back to read them – they are certainly well worth reading, but for me they invariably interrupted the flow.
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