The Red Hand of Fury by R N Morris. Book review

After a series of male suicides, one of whom is unsuccessful and gravely ill in hospital, Silas Quinn begins to investigate these apparently unconnected events. This grim work is something that will raise the long-buried spectres of Quinn’s past and pitch him headfirst into a darkness that he soon discovers has never been far away.

This is the first Silas Quinn book I have read. Although I didn’t so much read this book as grind my teeth while experiencing it, as I stressed over Quinn’s ever-increasing trials and tribulations. Given that the socially inept Quinn gives short shrift to authority, particularly when it gets in the way of the truth, he does not make life easy for himself. You feel Quinn’s world begin to uncomfortably shift like quicksand around him as his investigation takes him to places he would rather not go.

R N Morris is very good at creating atmosphere and sense of place, allowing the reader to really immerse themselves in the events unfolding at an alarming pace as Quinn digs deeper into the sinister goings on.

The Red Hand of Furyis set in the run up to the First World War, an event you can really sense beginning to impact on Quinn’s world, at first in a subliminal way. Quinn is running out of time on his case as the erosion of his inner peace eerily echoes the rapidly crumbling tranquillity of the everyday life of the general population. As the case develops, the clues drop into place with the inevitability of a shell being loaded into the breech of the infamous Big Bertha gun, readied for an assault on the soon to be embattled Allied forces.

Credible and mild-mannered, Quinn’s old nemesis is written in a very understated way which gives you the feeling that something is not right, but you just can’t put your finger on it. This just adds to the tension.

In all, The Red Hand of Fury is a highly entertaining and rattling good tale in the spirit of John Buchan’s Richard Hannay series. But you will have to read the novel to know whether Quinn survives to solve another crime or whether this will be the case that finally claims his sanity and his life.

The Red Hand of Furywas courtesy of Severn House via NetGalley.