Throw Me to the Wolves
ISBN10: 1620401517
ISBN13: 9781620401514
Hardcover
336 Pages
$27.00
CA$36.00
In the aftermath of Brexit, the body of a young woman is found by the river Thames, and a neighbor, a retired teacher from Chapleton College, is arrested. An eccentric loner—intellectual, shy, a fastidious dresser with expensive tastes—he is the perfect candidate for a media monstering.
In custody he is interviewed by two detectives: the circumspect Ander, and his workaday foil, Gary. Ander is particularly watchful now, because the man across the table is someone he knows—someone he hasn't seen in nearly thirty years. Determined to salvage the truth as ex-pupils and colleagues line up against the accused, he must face a story from decades back, from his own time as a Chapleton student, at the peak of anti-Irish sentiment.
With the momentum of classic crime fiction, Throw Me to the Wolves follows two mysteries—one unfolding in the media-saturated present, and the other bubbling up from the abusive past of the 1980s English school system. Beautifully written and psychologically acute, it is a novel about memory and childhood, prescient and piercingly funny, as wise as it is tragic.
Reviews
Praise for Throw Me to the Wolves
"Throw Me to the Wolves is a powerful story of media manipulation and how otherwise decent people can be corrupted by the power of money and influence . . . McGuinness masterfully brings the cases together in an intelligent narrative, both emotional and poignant."—New York Journal of Books
"Layers literary complexity and depth over a fully satisfying crime story. A smart police procedural that deftly integrates its protagonist’s past and present in his search for a murderer."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)