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BLEEDOUT
by Joan Brady
Simon and Schuster, April 2005
400 pages
12.99GBP
ISBN: 0743267893


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

American by birth but resident in Britain, Joan Brady is a very interesting author to watch. She was the first woman, and certainly the first American, to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, which she garnered for THEORY OF WAR. Intriguing to note that although Brady has written several books, BLEEDOUT is her first thriller.

The work was therapeutic for her after a shocking encounter with South Hams District Council where she became involved in litigation after the council permitted a shoe factory to be built next door, the chemical fumes from which injured the author's health. The council does not escape unscathed from the contretemps since the infamous prison in which one of the characters of the book spends nearly two decades, has been named after that authority.

The book is told in two voices, one being in the first person from lawyer Hugh Freyl, who narrates up until his grisly murder, the other in the third person from the point of view of David Marion, a child murderer imprisoned for two killings when he was aged 15.

Freyl had been suddenly rendered blind and therefore abandoned his profession. It is not until he and other blind people are badly treated during the course of an outing that he regains the motivation to return to the practise of law. He then decides to put himself in a position to help others so signs up for the Illinois State Literacy in Prison program so that he may aid illiterate prisoners and try to help them improve their lives.

Soon after this, he meets the 15-year-old murderer, David Marion, and becomes obsessed with discovering why the lad killed while at the same time he educates David to a high standard indeed. Just as he is about to be murdered, Hugh reflects that he never did, despite 20 years of attempting, discover the reason for the murders.

This book is completely engrossing. I dare any reader to put it down willingly before completing it. It is a complex psychological study of a privileged class, exemplified by Hugh's family and friends, and the severely deprived, personified in David, an orphan abused in foster homes and detention centres, and his friend Tony, another victim of foster homes but one who has maintained a sense of humour, albeit a warped one which causes him to delight in practical jokes.

The author gives horrific detail of life in prison and the stratagems a young boy must adopt in order to survive. The vile South Hams prison dehumanises its inmates at the same time as it abuses their rights and defiles the shreds of their characters. The way a former prisoner learns to adjust to the outside world after nearly two decades of imprisonment is fascinating, to say the least.

I cannot speak highly enough of this book. The plotting is intricate but completely credible; the dramatis personae are all too believable while the indignities inflicted by class systems, both within and without the boundaries of the official prison, are never less than enthralling.

Despite the length of the novel, interest is maintained throughout and I defy the reader to guess the identity of the murderer before the author reveals it. Let's hope Joan Brady decides not to limit her thrillers to this single opus.

Reviewed by Denise Pickles, August 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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