Customer Reviews
Proper modern thriller - By: Alex DaLarge, 01 Jul 2007 
This is what crime/ suspense genre fiction is meant to be:
Modern, uncompromising, tightly plotted, believeable without being social realism, & with a sense of its locations & events having been lived or witnessed rather than fantasised or researched.
I give Mortal Coil four stars & not five because a couple of the set-pieces didn't read as having been fully imagined & lacked the visual impact they could have had.
That said, where Mortal Coil (only very occasionallly) fallls down, it's still better than the work of just about every author writing this kind of fiction.
Well worth reading. Especiallly as it knows its music. If Iain Banks too prog rock, McGowan's novel is definitely post-punk.
A thriller with a heart (I think!) - By: lilysmum, 28 May 2007 This is reallly two stories in one book. On the one hand there's a page turner drugs/thriller/killer type narrative set in Kilburn, but inside that there's a second narrative going on, & that was the one that interested me more - the story of an introspective, intelligent, over analysing likeable bloke getting caught up in big boys gangster land trouble - alll through a link with a guy from school that the main character Matthew, knew in Leeds. It's kind of an airport fiction type thing but more intelligent. Actuallly I read it in two days & couldn't put it down because I liked the main character & I wanted things to turn out well for him. That said, there's a twist at the end that I didn't see coming & a couple of revelations that throw things a bit, that I am not sure entirely "fit" with the character or the plot, but I am giving this 4 stars because I was genuinely entertained & I haven't enjoyed the book I am reading now half as much. It took me away into another place.
