East of England

I found this book addictive and mesmerising. Initially impatient with the staccato text I came to realise that it fits perfectly with the characters it was portraying. Matlock was a likeable character despite his bad boy image and the tension as old scores were settled built to a dramatic finale. One thing that puzzled me, as a Lincolnshire yellowbelly (now more of a southerner) I know the area where the book was set well and I couldn't understand why some towns and villages were clearly identified whereas other names were corrupted.

East of England

By Eamonn Griffin

Published by Unbound Digital


PUBLISHERS BLURB 

Dan Matlock is out of jail. He's got a choice. Stay or leave. Go back to where it all went wrong, or simply get out of the county. Disappear. Start again as someone else.

But it's not as simple as that.

There's the matter of the man he killed. It wasn't murder, but even so. You tell that to the family. Especially when that family is the Mintons, who own half that's profitable and two-thirds of what's crooked between the Wolds and the coast. And who could have got to Matlock as easy as you like in prison, but who haven't touched him. Not yet.

And like Matlock found out in prison, there's no getting away from yourself, so what would the point be in not facing up to other people?

It's time to go home.

East of England blends a rural take on the noir thriller with a fascination with the British industrialised countryside that lies east of the Wolds, between the Humber and the Wash. Unlit byways rather than the neon-bright and rain-slicked city. A world of caravan parks, slot machines, and low-rise battery farms.

The flatlands of the east coast; decaying market towns and run-down resorts, and the distant throb of offshore windfarms. Where the smell you're trying to get out of your clothes is the cigarette taint of old phone boxes and bus shelters, and where redemption, like life, is either hard-earned or fought for, one way or another

MY REVIEW

Dan Matlock, released from prison after two years is expecting his father, Joe to pick him up, but he’s not there. So he steals a car and makes his way home....

Dan is not a nice man, he’s back into ‘working’ for Big Chris almost immediately as her debt collector, he’s also choosing other targets for his thieving, to let certain factions, namely the Mintons and Corrigans that he’s back.

So begins a tale of violence and various dodgy dealings, with such descriptive writing you feel you could find your way round the area with no problem. You can almost smell the seedy, seaside, Skeg, and rural Lincolnshire with its menacing darkness that’s just out of eyesight, something you might catch out of the corner of your eye beyond the bright lights and noise of ‘fun’.

Eamonn Griffin has created a realistic, believable character in Dan Matlock, Lincolnshire’s very own ‘Jack Reacher’...you may not like him much, but you will still be on his side, and hoping for the best with the tension building to a bloody, violent end, with some surprises that I didn’t see coming at all. Brilliant read and I can thoroughly recommend it. 

I would like to thank the Author/the Publishers/NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a fair and honest review