Book review: ‘Chaser’ by James Phelan. Sorry but this is the first book in ages that I actually gave up on. The book is written in the first person, Jesse, who is Australian. He and three companions are the only survivors of a subway crash. When they surface they find Manhattan decimated and the few people left have turned into freaks seeking liquid whether it be rainwater or blood, they don’t care and are happy to kill for it.

There isn’t a lot of gore despite the subject, in fact by the time I gave up the four survivors were hiding in a skyscraper and had been for a while. My main problem was the lack of speech marks. As it was written in the first person, the assumption each time is that Jesse is speaking or narrating but after several words found ‘Mini said’ on one of the other characters. Each time it drew me out of the story as I spent seconds working out what was prose and what was narrative and who was actually saying it. Maybe it’s the editor in me, but it just stopped me engaging in the book and after one third I simply gave up.