fullybooked2017

There was a saying beloved of football managers and commentators that went something like, “He’s a whole-hearted player – he leaves nothing in the changing room.” The metaphor was meant to describe someone who gives – and here’s another cliché – “one hundred and ten percent” on the field. To Kill a Shadow is a bit like that. It has corrupt coppers, SAS types thundering about on motor bikes, a brave-but-flawed heroine, murders, torture, kidnap, a military-industrial conspiracy, ground-breaking neuro-technology and political chicanery. The central character is called Julia Castleton which is, confusingly, also the name of the author of the novel. Of Julia in the book, more later, but the author’s name is the nom-de-plume of what the end papers say is “an internationally best-selling and critically acclaimed writing duo”.

The book’s Julia is actually Julia Danby, the younger daughter of a millionaire businessman and man of influence. Marital fidelity was not his strong point, and while Julia’s mother was dying of cancer, he was off in the south of France with his latest girlfriend. This made Julia furious with her father. At the time, she had a proper job as a journalist with The Times, but the family conflict sent her completely off the rails, and she ended up – in no particular order – being sectioned under the Mental Health Act, losing her job, and becoming mother to a baby boy whose father – such was her mental disorder – remains unknown.

Now, she has somewhat recovered, and writes a political blog called The Castleton Files which seeks to expose fraud and deception. Spurning financial help from her father, from whom she is now estranged, she earns small change from advertisers on her blog, and people who choose to become subscribers. Living in a shabby flat, she tries to keep a roof over her head and that of her little boy, Alex.

When a former military medic who saw service in Iraq and Syria contacts her with what she sees as a breakthrough story, she puts the dossier – basically alleging that British arms manufactures made a fortune selling their goods to ISIS – online, and all hell breaks loose. Initially, hits on her website go through the roof and she is bombarded with requests from mainstream media for interviews and further information.

But – suddenly – it all goes pear-shaped. UK government strongly refutes Julia’s allegations, her history of chaotic mental health is made public but – worse still – many of the details in her dossier are shown to be palpably untrue. The people from Social Services are trying to prove she is not a fit mother to Alex, the police bust down the doors of her flat and then claim they have found Category ‘A’ images of child abuse on her laptop and, in a further descent into her mental hell, Julia starts self harming again, and gulps down her Tegretol – a drug used for controlling the effects of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Julia eventually discovers what the conspiracy is all about, and it  is actually far more alarming than the story of the arms sales. The military medic had discovered something so fantastical and improbable, that were it to be true, the whole nature of warfare would be changed.

I didn’t find Julia a very sympathetic character. Keeping Alex is clearly important to her, but at the first nudge, she heads off with her mates – mostly ex-SAS – to various parts of the country, in order to chase down the latest lead. Meanwhile, the little boy is left in the care of her older sister Elaine, whose elegant lifestyle and bourgeois values Julia clearly disdains.

This reservation aside, I won’t lie. I read the book cover to cover with great enjoyment in a few sessions, and the action is relentless. Needless to say, Julia’s hunches are eventually proved to be solid fact, and her credibility as an investigative journalist is restored. To Kill a Shadow is published by Pendulum books and is available now.