Blood & Ink, Brett Adams

BLOOD & INK is a crime novel about a student that could be writing a crime novel. Or could be planning a range of murders. When his Literature professor Jack Griffen discovers five sheets of paper that the student, Hiero, has written, Jack's not sure which option it is. Until the first event that matches one of the scenarios he's been left.

Why would Hiero choose Jack you well may ask? Well Jack's an interesting character, mild-mannered, but coming back from a recent nervous breakdown. His wife divorced him, and she and their adult daughter moved to the USA, leaving Jack lost and very vulnerable. Into that void stepped the very odd Hieronymus Beck, all the while claiming to be the professor's biggest fan, setting him up for the oddest experience of anyone's life.

It's not long after discovering those five pages, descriptions of murder / death scenarios that rapidly start to play out in distant lands, that Jack finds himself on the run after Hiero. Following the clues on the sheets of paper, and the hints about students that were also in his class, with little on him except the few odd possessions he manages to pull together as he goes, and a sense of determination to stop Hiero that he really doesn't seem to understand himself.

Readers will need to be paying close attention to the manic experience that is BLOOD & INK. It's littered with references to true crimes, and well known crime novels, woven so seamlessly into the narrative you might not catch them all until suddenly, there's bells ringing somewhere in the back of your head. Mind you, you'll have to be paying close attention to hear the bells as well, there was something a bit breathless, uncontrolled about the reading experience of this novel that came as quite a surprise. It's definitely a very different sort of crime reading experience. Part caper, serial killer, puzzle solver, unreliable narrator, psychological thriller in style, there's also something rather voyeuristic about it as you're basically watching a man who could very well be in the throws of yet another breakdown, barely holding it all together. Jack / not Hiero that is. Hiero seems like a very calculating, cold clinical sort of person. That's also what's a bit different about this novel. It's really not about Hiero, it's about what Hiero, the chase, and the obsession is doing to Jack.

BLOOD & INK is a very intense read, punctuated by humour and feats of unbelievable bravery or stupidity, depending on your viewpoint. It's intense and funny, it's eye-rolling unbelievable and frightening real. It's a mystery, in the middle of a family drama, with gasp inducing and heart-sinking inevitability about a lot of the moments in it. It was also utterly involving, and was over way too quickly.