SO THE DOVES

Starred review from April 29, 2019
London journalist Marcus Murray, the narrator of this elegantly written crime novel from British author James (Wounding), has just broken a story linking a major bank to terrorist organizations. Riding high on this success, he’s surprised when his editor sends him to his rarely revisited home town of Medway, Kent, to cover the discovery of a body found while workers were clearing farmland for a European railway link. Returning home stirs up memories of his school friend Melanie Shoreham, who disappeared when he was 17 back in 1989. Third-person flashbacks inform and influence Marcus’s view of the present. He now regards Melanie “as if she was a figment of my imagination... What I mean is, she became a story, a myth, a series of actions and consequences folded into my own history.” His life begins to crumble when the truthfulness of his latest scoop is called into question and he becomes a suspect in the Medway murder. Is he being set up? Did he have a hand in Melanie’s disappearance? More than a mystery, this fascinating novel is an investigation into loss, loyalty, and the lies people tell each other and themselves.