Twenty-one in '21: Knife Edge

I've read far less in recent years than I would like. To help remedy this, I've set myself the modest target of reading twenty one books in 2021. When I finish one, a thumbnail review here will follow.

1/21: Knife Edge by Simon Mayo

The blurb: 6.45am. A sweltering London rush hour. And in the last 27 minutes, seven people have been murdered.

In a series of coordinated attacks, seven men and women across London have been targeted. For journalist Famie Madden, the horror unfolds as she arrives for the morning shift.

The victims have one thing in common: they make up the investigations team at the news agency where Famie works. The question everyone’s asking: what were they working on that could prompt such brutal devastation?

As Famie starts to receive mysterious messages, she must find out whether she is being warned of the next attack, or being told that she will be the next victim...

The review: I wasn't going to do this again, having missed by target in 2019 and 2020 and with reading time at a premium, but here we are. Perhaps I will have more time to read whilst bike training. Also, this isn't the sort of book I would normally buy, but I was tempted into parting with my hard-earned because I like Simon Mayo. I will listen to any radio show with him at the helm, and have done so since he was the pre-ginger breakfast DJ on Radio 1. His more recent Radio 2 drivetime show was like a balm for the soul, and he even manages to make Mark Kermode more bearable. I was pre-disposed to liking Simon's book, in other words: I wanted to like it.

And I did... ish... mostly. There are plenty of plus points. Mayo uses his knowledge of the media well, especially in the opening chapters, and builds a completely authentic-feeling news agency environment. It also feels like he's done his research when it comes to extremist organisations, and the environment in which they operate. Add to that the fact that his plot - terror attacks targeting journalists in seemingly motiveless, co-ordinated operations - feels very now, if not quite the unusual now of 2020/21. So why do I only like this, ish?

Well, it's the little things. I haven't read any of Mayo's other fiction, but in Knife Edge at least he seems to have a habit of introducing every new character with a literal physical description, as in "Six two, white, mid-fifties, safari suit..." and "a young twenty-six, wild, curly blonde hair and a slender frame." "Five six, gangly and with an eager-to-please smile." I could go on. I get that maybe it's a deliberate stylistic choice, a nod to hardboiled detective fiction perhaps. But every time it happened, it grated with me, because it feels like the sort of writing you get encouraged to do at primary school and then encouraged not to do on creative writing courses. I don't need to know he's exactly 6'2", do I? If he's tall, show me he's tall by having him look down at someone else. If he's mid-fifties, don't tell me that, but show me that he's a bit slower getting up that younger colleagues, or something like that.

The other slightly annoying habit Mayo has, here at least, is dropping into overly sparse prose at moments of high tension, sometimes resorting to a string of isolated verbs. "Slowing. Stopping. Reversing. Parking." I know why he's doing it - change of style = change of pace, staccato prose = heightened tension - but it's done too often, for this reader. It jars, and upsets the flow of an otherwise pleasing, flowing style.

I should say, for clarity, that there is a lot to like here: good research will only take you so far, but on top of that Mayo has a fine plot, and he can undoubtedly write. Not only that, but the story picks up pace as it progresses, and the conclusion fairly rattles along (albeit with a plot twist that's never really satisfactorily explained). It's just that I think this could have been even better. I don't think this book would have been published in this form if the author didn't come with a degree of fame attached, and that's no disrespect to Mayo but more to his editor(s) who, I think, could have wielded their pens a little more and turned this from decent pot-boiler with occasional Dan Brown tendencies into the cracking thriller it clearly aspired to be. Never underestimate the power of a good editor.

The bottom line: good, not great, but timely and well-researched thriller that would have benefited from better editing.

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★★☆☆