John Sutherland, author of The Castle, was an experienced and high-ranking police officer and hostage and crisis negotiator, who is now retired. He’s written several books (fiction and non-fiction) of which this is the latest. And in this, like his other thrillers, he writes about what he knows best – policework and hostage negotiation.
This story is about two police officers, Alex and Pip, both high ranking and both hostage and crisis negotiators. The book begins with an intense prologue, where the reader meets Alex in a very nasty situation. A drug-addicted thug has beaten his much younger girlfriend to a pulp and is now barricaded in his flat with his 4-month-old baby daughter, threatening to hurt her if the police don’t stand back. Somehow Alex manages to talk him down and the man agrees to let Alex hold the baby while the father rests his arms. The minute he releases the child the police are on him and the situation resolves without further violence.
After this incident, Alex and Pip (who has her own work traumas to deal with) decide it is time to take a holiday and so they rent a cottage in the grounds of a castle in the wilds of central Scotland. They are the only people there apart from Tom, the gamekeeper, who is an old friend, and an Earl and his friend who are there for the fishing.
On the first morning of their stay they go for a walk around the grounds with Tom and hear shots ring out. With bullets flying, one of the fishermen drops dead, Pip is seriously wounded, and angry foreign voices rapidly come closer. Alex, Pip, the gamekeeper and the surviving fisherman, the Earl, manage to reach the castle and barricade themselves in. When their pursuers arrive they learn the truth about the situation. The men are violent Russian thugs, hired by an American businessman and his daughter to kidnap the Earl and force his public confession to a violent rape a few years earlier.
Despite the odds, Alex, Pip, Tom and Earl escape into the mountains, chased by the Russians and the Americans. What follows is a relentlessly tense story as the four try to evade their pursuers in the teeth of a storm, but they need all of Alex’s crisis negotiation skills when they take refuge in a remote mountain rescue cabin and get trapped by the bad guys. Being fiction, it all comes out well in the end!
My verdict
I thought The Castle was a good story and very readable. John Sutherland’s prose is straightforward, if a trifle factual in places, and the mountains and storm are well described.
Alex, Pip and Tom are obviously the good guys and they are also well described and come across as decent people; the Americans not so much, although you do end up feeling for them. As for the Earl, he is an absolute caricature of an overindulged, over-privileged excuse for a human being. Totally self-centred, he’s uninterested in anyone’s safety but his own so he makes a useful foil for the others. As you might expect, the Russians are sketchily drawn, because they are only really there to provide the firepower and violence that keeps the plot running.
I liked this book, even though in places I found it dry and a bit long. Of course it’s also unlikely, but then it is fiction! And if you like this sort of straightforward thriller, then I’m sure you’ll enjoy this. I found it exciting to read and I did keep turning the pages, so I rate it as 4 Stars.
Review by: Freyja
For Oundle Crime, 4 Stars = “A good book with an interesting, layered story that you will still remember after a month.”
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