Reviews of Earler Writing: RAZORBILL, A WILD JUSTICE

RAZORBILL

A novel with terrific energy and madly stylish!

Keegan writes with an unusual sensuality and his prose reads like a broken bottle of whisky in the sun, strong, glittering, with dark edges.


DIANA GABALDON New York Times Top Ten Author of the Outlander and Lord John series.








A WILD JUSTICE



A Wild Justice, by Alex Keegan



This is the fifth novel by Keegan in the Caz Flood series of crime thrillers. Caz Flood is a British cop/ investigator put on the case to solve a rather grisly murder. The corpse is horrifically mutilated and Keegan gives the reader a rather graphic description of the remains which causes some of the policemen at the scene to lose the contents of their stomachs. There is no obvious motive for this murder and the corpse is unknown with no available history to help solve the case. Only when a second body turns up, only slightly less mutilated, do the connections start to be made.

Flood then feels that the case may be too much for her and moves over to the child protection department to get involved in a case of child abuse and a possible paedophile ring. The literature on child abuse and paedophilia Flood is given to read is reproduced in the novel and harrowing to say the least. It all starts with a young boy, who attends a local nursery, who says he is being abused by his 'second daddy'. It comes to light that two brothers are actually setting up the nurseries in order to gain easy access to children and involving them in pornography of all kinds.

So, how do the two stories fit together? That would be telling. Keegan entwines the stories beautifully to produce a well crafted thriller. Caz Flood is an extremely likeable character and when she is investigating the crimes you wonder how someone could be so lucky not to get caught out. The thing is, you want her to be lucky. The novel also raises interesting ethical questions - who has the right to say who should die? If someone commits a crime that is so abominable and is then murdered, do you really want to rush to catch that persons killer? The answers are not given, but the book is a great read and does make you think long after you've put it down.