Fierce Debut Crime Novel from Chris Power, A LONELY MAN

When you look up British author Chris Power online, you find his literary criticism for The Guardian, and his short story collection Mothers. Maybe the noted story collection marked many perceptions of his new crime novel, A LONELY MAN—because his publisher uses terms like "existential" and "elegant literary thriller" to describe the work.

Actually, it's a gritty and intense thriller set in Berlin, with an all-too-believable premise: Robert, a writer with a devastating case of writer's block, casually meets another author, the rather drunk and miserable Patrick. When Patrick gets himself into a public fist fight and Robert and his wife intervene, the two men set a follow-up get-together. The conversation isn't exactly what you'd expect from a pair of writers getting together:

'You were telling me how you made your fortune writing this oligarch's memoirs,' Robert said.

'My fortune, yeah. Well, it fell apart.'

'Why?'

'Vanyashin died. Last year.'

'How?'

'The inquest said suicide,' Patrick said. 'Just announced it, in fact. The coroner gave his verdict last week.'

But Patrick claims it wasn't suicide. He's so drunk, and such an obvious mess, that Robert has no problem laughing this off, and calling Patrick suicide. Russian oligarch, dead of suicide -- anything else is clearly product of an overactive, alcohol-fueled imagination. But he might as well use this amusing paranoia in his new author buddy as fuel for jump-starting his own fiction. Right?

Well, maybe not so right. While evidence piles up around him, Robert keeps labeling his sightings of people following him, or Patrick, as imagination, but with more edge, more underlying terror. And when his family comes under threat, his worst imaginings aren't equal to the risks.

A tightly knitted, sharply paced espionage/crime novel, A LONELY MAN is well worth devouring. Berlin never looked so much like, well, any large city you too might walk into, looking for a story worth telling. Readers beware: The presence of friendship and affection does not guarantee everything will work out -- especially when danger's already been pushed aside for so long.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.