They don't write them like this any more. A gritty, adventure, western, revenge, redemption, war and serial killer novel all rolled up into one epic story. More!

I have tried and failed to write a coherent review of Retribution Road, with several attempts, as it’s impossible to do justice as an amateur reviewer to the sheer magnificence of this novel. Adopting the form of an allegoric odyssey, Antonin Varenne has produced a sprawling, magisterial novel that defies comparison to anything I have read before…

Structured as three interlinking parts, and traversing more than 700 pages, I could feel the influence of a quest serving as a plot device in mythology and fiction, with a difficult journey towards a goal, in the character of Arthur Bowman who inhabits, and influences, each stage of the novel. As he journeys from his military service in Burma, then on to Victorian London, and finally to the swathes of unconquered territory of America in the grip of the gold rush, each section of the book is wonderfully visual, with Varenne depicting each landscape with pinpoint precision. In his use of location the ordinary is made extraordinary, and the reader’s sense of us being such a small inconsequential part of the natural world is continually brought to bear. Bowman is beautifully cast as both avenging angel and pioneer, weighted down by the brutal events in his personal history, and hence a man of changeable moods and impulses that wax and wane during the course of his mission to track down a killer.

The prose throughout is as tender and sensitive, as it is violent and vengeful, and our emotions and feelings are challenged and manipulated throughout, as Bowman navigates through both testing terrain, and human interaction. The book also poses some interesting theories on morality and immorality, particularly as a consequence of Bowman’s actions, and those of the man he so ardently and doggedly pursues, at intense personal cost. I don’t think it is any exaggeration to say that this is a true magnum opus, and held me utterly in its power along the long road to redemption and justice. It was just a completely wonderful emotional rollercoaster, suffused with historical detail, and a totally authentic evocation of place. It is a hugely complex and challenging novel, addressing themes of war, religion, revenge, human connection and emotional strife. As ever, Sam Taylor provides a perfect translation, that subtly captures the nuances of Varenne’s intensity of emotion. I cannot praise Retribution Road enough, and would highly recommend it for fiction and crime fiction readers alike. C‘est vraiment magnifique!

Despite an awkward translation at times, this is a powerful work about a quest and adventure story over great geographical space in a time of emerging English civilisation - a criticism of the East India Company onthe one hand for the appalling conditions of sailors and their native servants crossing oceans in search of successful commerce - we follow Bowman (who we meet slightly later than one normally does) and find him to be ruthless but a canny assessor of his fellows - ordered to choose the most loyal and keen among his fellow sailors to lead a mission certain to end in death, perfidy among them leads to his lifelong hunt for the worst of them - and despite a daughter in his life, so he goes on even when in a supra-human communication, a former member of that group reaches out to him - it kind of overtook me, this one. Surprisingly strong!

Thanks Quercus Books and netgalley for this ARC.

This is a epic novel that grabs your attention for days and will not let you forget. I can't wait to discuss this book with others at the local library because this novel covers many issues still relevant today.

An epic story ranging from Burma in the 1850s to the East End of London and to America at the time of the Civil War. This is the story of Sgt Arthur Bowman, a ruthless colonial soldier of the East India Company who is chosen to undertake a secret river mission with 10 chosen men. They’re captured, imprisoned and tortured horrifically by the Burmese.
When a maimed corpse is found years later in the London sewers it bears all the hallmarks of the torture they suffered, and from the blood-scrawled word: ‘Survival’, Bowman knows it is one of his men who carried out the evil deed. He makes it his mission to find the killer and his journey takes us across to America, Mexico and the Wild West – where the tortured body-count grows. There’s violence, greed, retribution, vengeance, horror, and the worst of men but also healing and growth of the spirit and forgiveness here. Overall you are rooting for the brutalised Bowman, a man of his time who does have a moral compass there somewhere – the further away from the East India Company he gets, the more he improves!

As near as five stars as dammit, for a book that is twice as long as I would normally prefer. Still, it did come from an author whose two previous novels translated into English I've both enjoyed. But nothing led me to expect this – a perfectly evoked historical milieu of rotten warfare for ill gains in Asia, a smelly, shit-ridden London and more, that I just wouldn't have expected from such a cosmopolitan-seeming French author. His usual damaged males in a damaged male world are given a lot of pages to populate, but they're pretty much all engaging. If you read the blurb, quotes or other reviews and expect an out-and-out historical crime thriller you may well find pieces here lacking, but I loved the book for what it adds to that bare framework – it's rich, absorbing and really quite cleverly done.

This is a extraordinary and epic translated novel, a hybrid of a number of genres taking in among others, adventure and western, that imprints itself on your consciousness and is destined to remain there for a long time. It begins with Sergeant Arthur Bowman, a loner, an East India Company soldier, sent on a covert mission in the second Anglo-Burma war in 1852 with a ragtag group of men. The mission is a failure, they suffer some of the worst that mankind offers and only a handful of barely alive men survive, with Bowman's mantra, Survival, embedded in their torn souls. This is a story of greed, retribution, redemption, forgiveness, what it is to live tenuously on the edge between life and death, and the driven search for a deeply disturbed killer that spans continents.

A deeply traumatised Bowman, a heavy drinker and visitor of opium dens, is working as a policeman in an impoverished and stinking London. Suspended after a man is killed, he then finds himself being led to an unimaginable murder with the word 'survival' at the scene. He knows it could only have been committed by his group of men. Prior to being disbanded, the East India Company deny such a mission occurred and Bowman becomes the chief suspect. He locates Captain Reeve who tracks down the current whereabouts of those men and gives Bowman a veritable fortune. Upon locating most of the men, Bowman finds nearly all are victim to misfortune, death, and madness. By coincidence, he comes across a New York Tribune article that relates a murder with the same MO in Reunion, Texas. Becoming aware that two of the group are in the USA, he travels there to find his man to stop him. His search takes him to the wild west, across many states and Mexico. He encounters pioneers, farmers, gold prospectors, soldiers, indians, slavery, the American Civil War and Alexandra Desmond. The journey tests him to his limits and puts him on the path of profound change as the ghosts around him multiply.

This is a complex and intricate story of its time, of how much the human spirit can suffer, endure and the slight possibility of hope. Bowman is a man who tries to put right the wrongs he encounters without fear because he has seen all the horror there is to see and done much he is not proud of. He is a man more sinned against than sinning. The writing is sublime, vivid and descriptive, with a compelling narrative that captures the countries in that specific historical period. The author has clearly done his research. This is a book I loved and which I highly recommend. Thanks to Quercus for an ARC.