Reconstruction

Informationen zum Autor Mick Herron  is a British novelist and short story writer who was born in Newcastle and studied English at Oxford. He is the author of six books in the Slough House series ( Slow Horses ,  Dead Lions ,  Real Tigers ,  Spook Street ,  London Rules , and the novella  The List ) and four Oxford mysteries ( Down Cemetery Road ,  The Last Voice You Hear ,  Why We Die , and  Smoke and Whispers ), as well as the standalone novels  Reconstruction,  Nobody Walks   and  This Is What Happened . His work has won the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel, the Steel Dagger for Best Thriller, and the Ellery Queen Readers Award, and been nominated for the Macavity, Barry, Shamus, and Theakstons Novel of the Year Awards. He currently lives in Oxford and writes full-time. Leseprobe In cartoons, when the alarm rings, the cat, mouse, dog, whatever, hauls a mallet from under the pillow and BAM!—cogs, levers and coils go everywhere; the clock face droops from its casing like a cuckoo on a spring . . . Morning is broken. In the real world, you simply reach a slow hand out and depress the button so the ringing stops. And for the moment it takes this to happen, you’re held between two worlds: the dream life in which mallets are hidden under pillows by pyjama-clad animals, and the default waking mode in which you blink twice, remember who you are, and feel detail seep back into you the way light infiltrates the room—you’re Louise Kennedy, you’re thirty-two years old, and today is either the first day of the rest of your life or the last day of your old one, depending on how things work out. It’s Tuesday, April 3rd. The weather’s set for fair. Sunlight has already reached the bedspread, drawing upon it a range of shadow mountains whose outcrops and valleys exactly match the folds and ridges of the curtaintops. It’s time to get up. It’s time to get up.      Louise muffles a sigh, and pulls herself out of bed.     6:45.     This is where it begins. And this, too, is where it begins; an hour earlier, and some five miles from Louise’s bed: in a grey lay-by, shielded from the A40 by a row of gasping trees.     This stretch of the road, this time of the morning, most traffic is headed the other way; the first leg of the pilgrimage into London, hauling workers on to the motorway and firing them through the chalk cutting on the county border, where red kites ride the thermals overhead; then on past the redaubed stretch of graffiti ( Why do I still do this every day? ) to the stilted Westway and the congestion-charged canyons beyond. But George Trebor’s on the homeward leg of the Lille/Birmingham run, and this lay-by is where he parked overnight; partly because the legislation won’t let him ply his sixteen-wheeled trade twelve hours at a stretch; partly because there’s a loo here; but mostly because the back of his cab’s a fine and private place, unlike a two-up/two-down containing three teenage boys and a harassed wife. Which is maybe why he’s overslept, and is still in the cab sorting out shaving gear when a car pulls off the road, passes his rig, and parks outside the brick toilet. There’s another truck behind George’s but nothing in front, so he has a clear view of the car, which is a dark blue BMW with two occupants, neither of whom emerges. They’re both male. No clue as to what they’re doing: checking a map, maybe. Drawing straws to see who takes the first leak.      That’s when he sees the boy coming out of the toilet. Most days, Louise played the radio softly during breakfast; the Today programme, or—if reality pressed too heavily on her—Radio 2. This morning, though, she opted for silence, or what passed for it in this stretch of South Oxford, where the early morning hum from the railside works plugged any gaps left by the Abingdon Road traffic. Her kitchen window looked out o...

Product details

• Authors: Mick Herron
• Publisher: Soho Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• EAN: 9781641295017
• ISBN: 978-1-64129-501-7
• No. of pages: 352