Larry Stanbeck is dead after a fairly horrific road accident on his motorbike – or was it murder? His wife, Janine, is pointed in the direction of a local medium to attempt to converse with Larry’s spirit to find out the location of his missing winning lottery ticket – worth a cool £8 million. To complicate matters, Larry’s dad, Mick, is the local crime lord, the kingpin of Blades Edge – the biggest housing estate in the North of England and an overall rough place to live – and he wants the lottery ticket, too. As does a Russian gangster. A plethora of characters will happily kill for £8 million. Then throw in some liberal helpings of action, a few twists, and some brutal, though stupid, henchmen for good measure.
A Numbers Game is the crime thriller debut of one RJ Dark, a writer who seems to have appeared on the scene from nowhere but has certainly never been seen in the same room as his mortal enemy; award winning fantasy writer RJ Barker. Based on this debut, it’s only a matter of time before Dark also has awards to his name.
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Malachite Jones (call him ‘Mal’) is, well, a con man who has set himself up as a psychic medium. A reformed thief and recovered drug addict, Mal relies on his ability to cold read people, aided via an earpiece by his belligerent assistant/secretary Beryl – who could be viewed as a kind of spirit guide – to keep up the pretence of having the ability to communicate with the dead. His (seemingly only) friend is Jackie Singh Khattar, a man Mal has known since their shared tragic school days. On the surface, Jackie is a shrewd local businessman. Scratch that surface and you find that Jackie is as dodgy as they come. With an interesting twist of having military experience, a fondness for very expensive sports cars and his fingers in many pies, not least a line in local security at various levels included, but not limited to, threatening shop owners for protection money. Mal is the medium who is called on by Janine Stanbeck, at the behest of Jackie, and this results in Mal finding himself firmly in the middle of a tornado, playing detective in a world of criminal double dealings and violence that he’s never quite sure of getting out of alive. Lucky for him, Jackie still steps in to assist when possible.
The location of Blades Edge is just as much a character as anyone else. It’s a breathing constant in every scene, affecting and directing the action. Dark paints graphic pictures of a gritty, grimy Northern England environment: dilapidated houses, more dilapidated and colourful residents, scrapped car yards, treacherous roads, fast food restaurants that are fronts for criminal gangs, and over-priced convenience stores. It isn’t without it’s nicer areas, though, but these are few and far between and can prove just as dangerous as anywhere else in the estate. If Blades Edge is Hell, then Mal and Jackie are tortured souls seeking redemption and a way out of there and, maybe, one day they’ll get it.
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I must admit that with the influences of various pieces of fiction over the years, I started to question whether Jackie was real or a figment of Mal’s imagination, maybe even a Tyler Durden character. He does appear ‘over the top’ in places and is often, conveniently, in the right place at the right time, but then too many other characters interact with both Jackie and Mal at the same time. Also, what if Mal really can converse with the dead and he just hasn’t realised it yet? Is Beryl a real spirit guide?! These are the result of already seeing a number of plot twists and wondering what Dark might throw at us next, combined with my own over-active imagination.
I’ve honestly had difficulty choosing what to read next after finishing A Numbers Game. A hard to fill void has been left behind. It’s a compelling roller coaster ride of a crime thriller, full of twists and turns that certainly left me wanting more as well as feeling exhausted – though in a good, fulfilled, way. Definitely worth checking out.
A Numbers Game is released as an eBook on June 4th by Wavesback.
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