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Apr 30, 2019 Web Exclusive By Frank Valish

In his third book, Patrick McGuinness, whose previous novel and memoir received various critical lauding, takes on a murder and the media’s propensity to jump to conclusions.

Set in post-Brexit England, Throw Me to the Wolves begins with an unexplained killing. A young woman’s body is found in the river Thames. The media then latches onto a retired boarding school teacher, the deceased’s neighbor, as the culprit, largely due to the former teacher’s eccentric ways and the testimonies of former students. One of the detectives on the case is one of the accused’s former pupils.

The novel bounces back and forth between chapters that detail the detectives’ current work on the case and the one particular detective’s younger days at the accused’s school. As such, several stories unfold simultaneously-the murder case, the detective’s revisiting of his adolescence, the sometimes abusive nature of his boarding school life, and the media’s tendency toward the sensational, sometimes independent of the facts.

As Throw Me to the Wolves plays out, the reader finds out the truth about the murder; there will be no spoilers here. Suffice it to say that this nuanced novel hits all the right notes and will keep the reader engaged until the revelatory end.

(www.bloomsbury.com)

Author rating: 7/10