Throw Me to the Wolves
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
"Compulsively readable."-New York Times Book Review
"A significant literary achievement that also happens to be a terrific page-turner."- Jonathan Lee
"Elegantly written, darkly entertaining."- John Banville
"An extraordinary writer of great compassion . . . Stunning."- Denise Mina
In the aftermath of Brexit, the body of a young woman is found by the river Thames, and a neighbor, a retired teacher from Chapleton College, is arrested. An eccentric loner-intellectual, shy, a fastidious dresser with expensive tastes-he is the perfect candidate for a media monstering.
In custody he is interviewed by two detectives: the circumspect Ander, and his workaday foil, Gary. Ander is particularly watchful now, because the man across the table is someone he knows-someone he hasn't seen in nearly thirty years. Determined to salvage the truth as ex-pupils and colleagues line up against the accused, he must face a story from decades back, from his own time as a Chapleton student, at the peak of anti-Irish sentiment.
With the momentum of classic crime fiction, Throw Me to the Wolves follows two mysteries-one unfolding in the media-saturated present, and the other bubbling up from the abusive past of the 1980s English school system. Beautifully written and psychologically acute, it is a novel about memory and childhood, prescient and piercingly funny, as wise as it is tragic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this cerebral, if less than exciting, procedural from British author McGuinness (The Last Hundred Days), police officers Ander Widderson and his crude, quipping partner, Gary, look into the murder of a young woman whose body was discovered under a bridge in South East England (and about whom the reader learns nothing of consequence). The prime suspect, retired teacher Michael Wolphram, taught at Chapleton College when Ander attended the exclusive boarding school back in the 1980s. Ander's reminiscences about his time as Wolphram's student and the disappearance of his best friend, Danny, from the school provide counterpoint to the present-day investigation. The relationship between Ander and Gary, and that between Ander and Danny, come across with appealing tough-guy tenderness. But McGuinness's choice to center the media's frenzy to scapegoat Wolphram on individual manipulative reporters in print, and not on populist social media, seems quaintly out-of-date. Between musings on the conflict between media coverage and truth, the narrative often feels overly introspective and tensionless, while also failing as social commentary.
