Thriller set mainly in London and New York

28th March 2018

Pendulum by Adam Hamdy, thriller set mainly in London and New York.

Pendulum has probably the best opening chapter of any thriller I have read. John Wallace, a London photographer and veteran of the Afghanistan war, opens the door of his flat – only to be seized by a masked and body-armour-clad assailant. He is strung up from a beam in the flat with a noose around his neck. He is about to die – and he has no idea why… The beam (luckily put into the flat for artistic effect only…) collapses under the pressure. John seizes the opportunity, crashes out through the first floor window – and runs…

Sadly, though, for me the opening was the best part of the book. A good thriller has to be somehow believable (even if belief is at times somewhat strained…). Pendulum unfortunately is not. It is too farfetched and too unlikely a story. Wallace encounters a policeman, and explains what has happened to him. He is not believed – there is no evidence of a break-in at his flat, and the police believe he is simply a failed suicide. He is sent to a psychiatric facility where the same assailant breaks in and, again, nearly  kills him. He escapes and flees to an ex-girlfriend, who does believe him – and encourages him to go again to the police. This time the police take it seriously and a trap is set for the assailant, but it fails in dramatic and bloody manner. Who is trying to kill John, and why won’t he give up? John decides he has to be the one to to investigate. He Googles and, perhaps oddly, discovers others who have been attacked in the same way – apparent suicides with notes left on their Facebook pages to ‘prove’ it. Each has a dirty secret which is revealed in the note. The victims are scattered across the UK and the US with nothing apparently to connect them. For me, too much of the story is devoted to telling the tale of each ‘suicide’. Their stories are too disconnected and come over very much in isolation. To a significant they extent disrupt the narrative of the book.

John, after dramatic events in London (no more for fear of a spoiler…) heads out to New York to carry on with his investigations. He teams up with a disgraced detective, and they get closer to the ‘Pendulum Murderer’ – so called because of the way he leaves his victims swinging. The finale of the book is certainly very exciting, but – to my mind – somewhat too ‘clever’ and contrived.

All that said, others clearly do not have the same view of Pendulum as I do. It has received some rave reviews and is being adapted for UK TV. There is also talk of a motion picture.

I leave you to read the book and make up your own mind.

Tony for the TripFiction team

You can follow Adam on Twitter and via his website. You can buy his book HERE

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