Outside the White Lines – Chris Simms

I promised to get my hands on this début novel from Chris Simms after I heard him speak at Harrogate’s Crime Writing Festival last year.  He’s produced three novels since this début, but the motorway setting for Outside the White Lines was what caught my attention.  It sounded different and it is.  Road rage in this instance creates a killer and it’s someone who can’t stop killing.

Outside the White Lines tells the tale from three viewpoints: "the killer" (a nasty, feral and uncontrolled piece of work); "the hunter" (young Andy who has just joined the traffic police and wants to prove himself, but a nearing-retirement colleague who prefers to take it easy stands in his way); and finally, "the searcher", (an oddball character who lives on the periphery of society, finding a home on the central reservations and hard shoulders of the motorways, collecting and storing items found in his searches).

Borderlands – Brian McGilloway

Today sees the publication of Brian McGilloway’s début crime novel Borderlands by Macmillan New Writing.

How good it is to feel in familiar territory when reading this novel, but with the added bonuses of a fresh outlook and originality.  The writing is excellent and the suspense of the plot is maintained to the end.    The novel is populated with many strong characters and leaves you with the feeling "I really want to know more about them".  McGilloway also introduces a new location and setting with the Tyrone-Donegal border, between the north and south of Ireland.  So strong is the novel, it’s easy to imagine "Morse’s Oxford", "Rebus’s Edinburgh" having "Devlin’s borderlands" snapping at their heels.