Out from Urbane Publications on Thursday 2nd August, the debut novel by Marcelle Perks
Frannie is an English woman living in Germany, married to her Deutscher spouse and heavily pregnant expecting the birth of her first child; she feels like a fish out of water both hopeless with her minimum language skills and struggling to pass her driving test in a foreign country.
In an effort to cope when her baby is born, she attempts to instill herself with some independence and after passing she takes to driving at night to gain confidence on less crowded roads.
She enjoys the freedom the night gives her yet an encounter with a Polish motorcyclist looking for his missing sister leads to her being sucked into a world of nightclubs, autobahn prostitutes and organ trafficking.
Perks is a doyen of horror cinema, having written for publications including British Horror Cinema, Fangoria and Kamera. This in-depth knowledge comes to the fore, with Perks creating a sinister at times horrific world one that is at times frightening and shocking to read; the author does not hold back during the sexual encounters of these villains leaving nothing to the imagination of gruesome gory detail.
The book whips along at a cracking pace and in the protagonist of Frannie, Perks has written a character that is fiercely independent and one that is on an arc of her own from naïve beginnings to strong ending; the influence of Alice Lowe's Prevenge is prevalent in the work as well as the literary work of J. G. Ballard and his famous Crash novel.
While sold as a thriller, the book is very much a horror novel in context and one that will definitely stay with the reader if my reaction to it is anything to go by - and married with a great cover it is a book that is sure to be discussed at length by many a book group and book lovers.
Night Driver is out from Urbane Publications on 2nd August
My thanks to LoveBooksGroupTours for the review opportunity.
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