Claire McFall, Black Cairn Point, Hot Key Books, 1 August 2015, 359pp., $16.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781471404870
This is a thriller set in Scotland. Five friends celebrate the birthday of one of them by going on a camping trip in a remote area. By the end of the trip, only two of them are alive – one in a coma in hospital and the other in a psychiatric home. The book is told in the first-person, by Heather whom we meet first as she sits in a session with her psychiatrist. Throughout the book she plays a kind of game with the psychiatrist, refusing, as far as possible, to talk to him. His questions, however, often trigger memories of what happened during the camping trip, memories she conveys to the reader. We gradually build up a kind of relationship with Heather and sympathise with her plight as she hopes for a year for Dougie to wake from his coma so he can corroborate her story of what happened on the trip. As the story is told from her point-of-view we react to the other characters in the way she does.
Gradually too, we learn that she is suspected of killing all three of her friends but the memory she relates is of some supernatural creature taking them away in revenge for the removal of a brooch from a burial cairn. What is the truth? And what really happened?
The isolation is crucial to the plot of this story as is the apparent failure of the mobile phones of the group. They cannot contact their families when they need help. The landscape is bleak and the nearby sea menacing, even in the Scottish summer. Landscape acts as almost another character in this book, changeable, threatening and nurturing in turn. It is possible to imagine someone vanishing here, as Martin does, despite the search his friends mount.
The author builds the suspense bit by bit until we reach the completely unexpected ending which changes the reader’s perspective on everything that has gone before as we question everything Heather has told us. A gripping read.
Reviewed by Margot Hillel