The Shadow Friend by Alex North
If it had happened to you, you would have run away too.
Twenty-five years ago, Paul’s friend Charlie Crabtree brutally killed their classmate – and then vanished without a trace.
Paul’s never forgiven himself for his part in what happened. He’s never gone back home.
Until his elderly mother has a fall. It’s finally time to stop running.
It’s not long before things start to go wrong. His mother claims there’s someone in the house. Paul realises someone is following him. And, in a town many miles away, a copycat killer has struck.
Which makes him wonder – what really happened to Charlie the day of the murder?
And can anyone stop it happening again?
My Review
This is my third Alex North thriller – The Whisper Man being one of my all time favourites. I listened to The Half Burnt House on Audible and while I really enjoyed it, it’s a complicated story and I got confused. I said at the time that I should have read it on Kindle instead.
However, having credits to use, I decided to give Audible another go with The Shadow Friend and I found this much easier to follow (though I did have to go back and listen to a couple of chapters twice).
There are three different perspectives to consider – firstly we have 25 years ago when Charlie Crabtree and his friend Billy murdered a schoolmate in the playground, in the downbeat town of Gritten. It was a vicious killing and one that has haunted Paul Adams his whole life. He was initially accused of the murder, but it was immediately apparent it wasn’t him, when Billy, covered in blood, gave himself up. Charlie disappeared and was never seen again.
Secondly we have the POV of Detective Amanda Beck, who was the investigating officer in The Whisper Man. She is actually investigating a different murder in Featherbank, in which two boys have killed their schoolmate. They are following an online forum which talks about the murder in Gritten all those years ago. Is this a copycat killing? Once Amanda has made the link, she travels down to Gritten to investigate further.
Finally, we hear from Paul Adams, now. He hasn’t been back to Gritten since he went off to university, but his mother is dying and he wants to see her. She’s in a nursing home and getting more frail by the day.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she tells him.
In The Half Burnt House we learned about the concept of ‘determinism’ – ‘the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes regarded as external to the will.’ It added an extra layer to the story, and in The Shadow Friend, that extra layer is provided by Charlie’s obsession with ‘lucid dreaming.’
I first read about lucid dreaming in the novel Dreamside by the late, great, English speculative fiction writer, Graham Joyce. Lucid dreaming is the concept that you know you are dreaming when you are dreaming, and with enough ‘practice’ and keeping a dream diary, you can ultimately control your dreams and manipulate them. Charlie persuades his friends that they can even share their dreams.
I loved the whole idea behind this book. It’s fascinating, twisty and emotional and I will definitely be reading more by this author.
About the Author
Alex North was born in Leeds, where he now lives with his wife and son. The Whisper Man was inspired by North’s own little boy, who mentioned one day that he was playing with ‘the boy in the floor’. Alex North is a British crime writer who has previously published under another name.
