The Director's Cut by Nicholas Royle

The Director's Cut

Nicholas Royle

Four friends make an underground short film of a man's suicide. Fifteen years later the four are forced to meet again to examine their past actions and present relationships. This is the premise of a clever thriller set in a seedy and derelict London - with characters to match. The story flashes backwards and forwards in keeping with the cinematic theme, though I did find the first person narratives at the beginning and end jarred a little. But do keep reading because it all comes back together in a great twist I did not see coming at all!

Extract
Iain Burns boarded the last London-bound train of the evening, having slipped on to the platform without buying a ticket, so that no one would remember a man of his description travelling from Ipswich that night. By the time the train pulled out, the wheels of his car would have become embedded in twelve inches of mud under several feet of water. Keeping on the move, Iain avoided any inspectors. There was no control at Liverpool Street. He pulled up his collar and passed swiftly to the Underground, where he hopped on a westbound Central line train, changing at Bank and heading for the Northern line. At Camden Town he exited the system, intending to look for a convenient doorway. Having taken no more money than usual out of his account, he didn't have a lot of cash and a hotel was out of the question. His credit and cashpoint cards he had snapped in half and dropped in a bin.
Parallels
  • Complicity by Iain Banks
  • Gridiron by Philip Kerr
  • Shallow Grave - the film
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Violence
Explicit sexual content