Anthony discusses his book for May~ Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan

After looking through the boxes of proofs I found this one called Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan and the name instantly intrigued me. What I have found over the years of reading thrillers in particular and when seeking advice from people throughout the publishing profession is that you want to draw the reader in and hook from the first three chapters or so. Greg Buchanan did that for me in Sixteen Horses. He made me want to read on.

This is not like any other thriller in which a human corpse is found or a person is missing. In fact, so far there isn’t (as I have only read up to part one) any gruesome murder or kidnapping of a human, and that I think makes this book different and even more unnerving than your standard human murder investigation type book.

The story centres around the discovery of sixteen horses’ heads in a farmer’s field near a downtrodden seaside town called Ilmarsh. The lead characters are local detective Alec Nichols and Cooper Allen, a forensic veterinarian scientist who has been brought in to help. Both complicated, flawed and in Alec’s case, I felt he mirrored the landscape and dilapidated Ilmarsh. A marriage gone and a son, just about to go off to university, that he finds hard to communicate with. We first meet Cooper through a very visual description of a past case and jumps to a counseling session with her therapist. An un-cooperative meeting and an understanding of how Cooper feels the way she is judged in the profession and by the colleagues she works with. The author gives them both depth through snippets of their past, one how different it is to the now in the story and the other, how the experience influences them and why they are trying to understand it.

This a very graphic and atmospheric thriller that builds with an eerie background feel. It’s the unknown and animal abuse that struct me as to where the story is going. The structure of the story is presented in short segments, it moves forward quickly. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the story and would encourage anyone who likes an atmospheric thriller to choose this as your book for May.

You can request a copy here.