Hunters in the Dark

November 23, 2015
Robert Grieve, a 28-year-old English schoolteacher, begins his summer holiday in Cambodia by winning “two grand in dollar bills” at a borderland casino; Osborne’s sinuous, suspenseful novel traces Robert’s ensuing journey through a place where “karma swirled around all things.” Tired of his “claustrophobic and petty” life at home in Thailand, Robert seizes the opportunity that arises when suave, 30-something American expat Simon Beaucamp stylishly swindles him out of his winnings and his passport. Left nearly penniless in Phnom Penh, instead of going to the authorities, Robert invents a new name and identity and begins a relationship with the Paris-educated Sophal, herself at loose ends in the country of her birth. Meanwhile, the stolen money doesn’t benefit Simon and his Khmer girlfriend, Sothea, for long—goaded by paranoia and a shared heroin addiction, “they had taken off without much planning” and in the course of this haphazard trip encounter a violent force that also threatens Robert and his precarious new existence. Many of the characters seem like echoes of one another in various ways, which can take some getting used to on the reader’s part, and it isn’t always successful. What readers
will remember instead is Osborne’s lush, vivid descriptions of a land where “the daily thunder rolled in with a generous laziness and the trees shimmered with lightning.”

Starred review from September 15, 2015
A journey through contemporary Cambodia, where we encounter gambling, drugs, murder-and the mystery of human identity. Englishman Robert Grieve is bored with his life as a teacher in Sussex and spends his holidays in faraway places such as Greece and Iceland. One summer he goes to Thailand, and out of ennui as well as a spirit of adventure, he decides to travel to Cambodia. On his first night there, he gets lucky at cards and wins $2,000. It turns out this will bankroll a substantial vacation, so he decides to stay for a while and see what fate will bring. He soon meets a charismatic American, Simon Beauchamp, an expatriate with an aura of the sinister about him. Independently wealthy, Beauchamp is very much at home in the Khmer culture and begins to serve as Grieve's guide and mentor in Cambodian ways. Grieve decides to hang his shingle as a tutor of English, and very soon a Dr. Sar makes arrangements for him to tutor his daughter, Sophal, who becomes both Grieve's student and his lover. Something doesn't quite feel right, however, because Sophal is quite a woman of the world-she's been studying medicine in Paris-and her English is excellent, so it's not clear to Grieve why her father insists on the connection. And now Osborne (The Ballad of a Small Player, 2014, etc.) cunningly convolutes his narrative and turns it in a Graham Green-ish direction, for perversely, Grieve starts to introduce himself as "Simon Beauchamp," a confusion that will eventually lead him into danger. After a terrible crime is committed against Beauchamp, Davuth, a smooth and utterly corrupt policeman, gets involved in the case and vows to turn it to his own advantage. Complex in plot yet simple and intense in style, Osborne's narrative takes us into an Asian heart of darkness.

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November 1, 2015
Robert, a teacher in a small Sussex village, travels on summer holiday to Thailand, then decides to go to Cambodia. Arriving in a provincial town, he wins $2,000 at a casino. On a desultory tour of a temple, he meets Simon, a handsome American, who invites him to his beautiful riverside home. They talk, play chess, and smoke opium. Robert had planned to move on to Phnom Penh in the morning, but he awakens on the boat lacking his backpack, passport, and most of his winningsand he is dressed in Simon's clothes. Robert sensed Simon's subtle menace but ignored it. But Robert is little bothered by his loss and proceeds to line up work giving English lessons while the sinuous plot thickens to involve a former Pol Pot torturer turned cop and a Khmer prostitute. Osborne, frequently compared to Graham Greene (The Ballad of a Small Player, 2014), writes evocatively about the beauties and mysteries of Cambodia, but the naifish Robert seems fully oblivious to his environment and the machinations of the people he encounters. Still, Hunters in the Dark is a strange and heady novel sure to engage armchair travelers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

Starred review from December 1, 2015

Exile usually manifests in reorientation, a mantra Osborne has been elaborating on across three novels: The Forgiven, The Ballad of a Small Player, and now this new work. Robert, an Englishman living in Cambodia, is on an existential journey in Southeast Asia, escaping a life of middle-class boredom back in England. Just as he's about to return home for financial reasons, his luck changes as he stumbles into a job tutoring Sothea, the daughter of a wealthy Cambodian doctor. What begins as a professional arrangement soon becomes a romantic relationship as both Robert and Sothea share a mutual feeling of displacement. Whereas Robert is navigating the irreducibility of his foreignness, Sothea is rediscovering her homeland in the aftermath of Pol Pot's despotic reign. However, just as their romance is blossoming, Robert's secret life places them both at risk. VERDICT Within a thriller framework, Osborne successfully demonstrates the inextricably linked relationship between introspection and change. A deeply penetrating meditation on the human experience of belonging. [See Prepub Alert, 7/14/15.]--Joshua Finnell, Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2015

Osborne's The Unforgiven was an Economist and a Guardian Best Book of 2012 and an LJ "Best of the Rest," while the following The Ballad of a Small Player was a New York Times Notable Book and a New Yorker and NPR Best Book of the Year of 2014. His new book, which harkens back to Ballad's gambling theme, features mild-mannered, thirtyish British schoolteacher Robert Grieves, who unexpectedly wins big in Cambodia and is befriended by charismatic American expat Simon Beaucamp. But what are Simon's motives, really? And is Robert's situation a matter of luck (good or bad) or karma?

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2015

Exile usually manifests in reorientation, a mantra Osborne has been elaborating on across three novels: The Forgiven, The Ballad of a Small Player, and now this new work. Robert, an Englishman living in Cambodia, is on an existential journey in Southeast Asia, escaping a life of middle-class boredom back in England. Just as he's about to return home for financial reasons, his luck changes as he stumbles into a job tutoring Sothea, the daughter of a wealthy Cambodian doctor. What begins as a professional arrangement soon becomes a romantic relationship as both Robert and Sothea share a mutual feeling of displacement. Whereas Robert is navigating the irreducibility of his foreignness, Sothea is rediscovering her homeland in the aftermath of Pol Pot's despotic reign. However, just as their romance is blossoming, Robert's secret life places them both at risk. VERDICT Within a thriller framework, Osborne successfully demonstrates the inextricably linked relationship between introspection and change. A deeply penetrating meditation on the human experience of belonging. [See Prepub Alert, 7/14/15.]--Joshua Finnell, Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.