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It's high summer and there are some very weird goings-on in the UK's remote Fens. It starts with the murder of a man in a farm machinery showroom, and culminates in a deeply strange festival in a snooty village. DI Tom Fletcher and his colleague DS Sal Moresby are sent to investigate. And as they start to dig into Jake Skerrit's death, they uncover unexpected links with Russia as well as with the Thinbeach Wedding, the annual pagan festival. If you like books set out in the back of beyond with more than an echo of The Wicker Man, you'll snap up CORN DOLLS in an instant. The setting is entirely believable – this strange village in the middle of one of the UK's bleakest regions. You can feel the heat and the storms, as well as picturing some of the eccentric in-bred residents! Lennon's strong on cameo roles, but isn't quite so good at drawing us into his main characters. Sal is particularly under-drawn – I couldn't see the reasoning for not bothering to tell us her boyfriend's name, for example. And the enigmatic DI saga becomes rather drawn out and tiresome (although admittedly it does make sense in the context of the ending). CORN DOLLS also displays that frequent debut novel tendency towards the really rather annoying "had he but known" tag at the end of chapters. It really isn't needed, as the book is a thoroughly gripping page-turner. Lennon marries the unusual Russian angle very slickly with the remote village and its odd traditions. If you're a fan of Jim Kelly's Fenland series, you shouldn't miss CORN DOLLS. It's a fabulous first novel for Lennon, and I hope he's planning to bring back the characters and to ink them in much more strongly, rather than to leave this as an unusual standalone book.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, May 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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