Title: Lockdown
Author: Peter May
Published by: riverrun
Publication Date: April 1st, 2020
A city in quarantine.
London, the epicentre of a global pandemic, is a city in lockdown. Violence and civil disorder simmer. Martial law has been imposed. No-one is safe from the deadly virus that has already claimed thousands of victims. Health and emergency services are overwhelmed.
A murdered child.
At a building site for a temporary hospital, construction workers find a bag containing the rendered bones of a murdered child. A remorseless killer has been unleashed on the city; his mission is to take all measures necessary to prevent the bones from being identified.
A powerful conspiracy.
D.I. Jack MacNeil, counting down the hours on his final day with the MET, is sent to investigate. His career is in ruins, his marriage over and his own family touched by the virus. Sinister forces are tracking his every move, prepared to kill again to conceal the truth. Which will stop him first – the virus or the killers?
Written over fifteen years ago, this prescient, suspenseful thriller is set against a backdrop of a capital city in quarantine, and explores human experience in the grip of a killer virus.
Can you believe that this is the first novel of Peter May’s that I have ever read? Madness, I know! But, going by how much I enjoyed this book, I can assure you it won’t be long until I’m reading another of May’s books, because this was very, very difficult to put down, and I am overjoyed by the fact that there is a substantial backlist for me to now rifle through.
I’ll be honest, I felt a little bit strange, reading ‘Lockdown’, due to the fact that what goes down in this book is strikingly similar to what is going down in the real world right now. It blows my mind that, when May first wrote this novel, it was deemed ‘unrealistic’, yet here we are… Some of the things that May writes about in this novel are the very things I’ve seen in the media over the last month or so, everything from the temporary hospitals being built to provide more space for the sick, from the streets being deserted, silent like ghost-towns. It felt bizarre, to be placing myself in this story, when outside, the very same thing is happening, so really, I didn’t need to place myself anywhere at all. I’m already here. I’m living it, and that’s crazy, no?
‘Illness has reduced staffing by nearly thirty per cent. Health workers were at greatest risk, and suffering the highest casualties. In spite of FluKill. Nobody went to work any more. Only a handful of shops were open for a few hours a day. There was no public transport. The airports had been closed indefinitely. The economy of the capital was in freefall, and the rest of the world was ready to do anything it could to help the city contain its sickness.’
‘Lockdown’ is set in London, England. A place, as I’m sure you know, which is usually bustling and heaving with the masses, but a place now silenced by the threat of the same thing we, as a society, are facing today. A invisible killer, eliminating people with a tickle of the throat, a cough not veiled by a hand. As the virus sweeps through, down the alleyways and streets, something else is unfolding, something sinister. And now, it’s not just one killer they’re up against.
I love May’s writing style. It’s punchy, it’s sharp, it doesn’t mess around. It’s ‘in-your-face’ and it doesn’t hold back, yet it draws you in, with its edge and bluntness, powerful in its approach. And because it’s brand-new to me, I can see why this author has such a massive following, because it is wholly addictive, and it has you flying through the pages at break-neck speed, barely pausing for breath, barely pausing at all. I had this book at-hand throughout my day, ready and waiting for me to return to at any given chance. And perhaps it was a strange curiosity for me, to see real life within the book I was reading, perhaps I wanted to see what else would ring true, if anything else matched up, comparing ‘Lockdown’ to what was outside my own front door.
I found the characters in ‘Lockdown’ so easy to familiarise myself with. May writes simply yet gives so much away in just a few sentences, with no need for over-descriptive paragraphs or long-winded prose. D.I. Jack MacNeil was such a complex and interesting man, one whom I experienced a multitude of emotions for as the plot progressed. He certainly doesn’t have an easy ride in this novel, and throughout his investigation, I couldn’t help but to feel in awe of everything that he uncovered. I was rooting for him right until the very last page, and hoped against hope, as time raced on, that he’d crack the mystery that had befallen him. He was determined, thorough, and really didn’t stop despite the hardships he faced, and I felt nothing but respect for him by the end of it, fictional character or not. MacNeil, alongside the numerous other characters in this novel, were fantastically-crafted and handled, and their personalities shone right off the page, leaving me feeling as though I’d just spent time with the team myself.
Overall, ‘Lockdown’ by Peter May was an excellent piece of fiction, despite the similarities between this particular piece of fiction, and reality, being so bang-on right now. This was an epic, terrifyingly realistic novel, with a harrowing killer at its helm, that I absolutely did not want to put down. I cared for the characters, I cared for the world within the pages, and I really hope there’s a chance I’ll see more of D.I. MacNeil in the future, although who knows…
The Book Babe is awarding ‘Lockdown’ by Peter May with a rating of five out of five. I won’t be forgetting this book for a long, long time. How could I? I’d like to thank riverrun for the advanced reading copy of this book, that of which has no reflection on my providing a fair and honest review. You can purchase your copy here.
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