It’s been a few years since I read a Mark West story, and this novel from The Book Folks made me glad that I’d decided to revisit and also wonder why I’d left it so long.
“We Were Seen” is narrated by Kim Morgan, a lecturer and councillor in the fictional English coastal town of Seagrave. As the story begins, we find her attending a public meeting to protest the development of a golf course and hotel that will steamroll some local marshland. A fight breaks out, and after she is rescued from the violence by a young man, the pair enjoy a spontaneous one night stand. But it transpires that he’s a student at the college where she teaches and someone has taken photographs of their encounter, soon beginning an upsetting campaign of blackmail.
After the excitement of the opening chapters, in which Kim and her protector escape the meeting and are pursued by thugs, the pace cools to an atmosphere of building tension. Despite the stress of being blackmailed, Kim attempts to go about her normal daily life. But as the days go by, she is stalked by an intimidating and obnoxious man, and worries about who she can trust.
Kim assumes, quite reasonably, that her blackmailer is something to do with the proposed golf course she opposes, but the threatening letters that keep dropping on her doormat don’t seem to demand anything specific and serve only to unsettle. Then a dead body turns up on the beach, and the mystery – and the fear – really starts to escalate.
This is a slick and addictive novel. Kim is investable in her normality – a likeable and self-aware everywoman – and the way she is torn between rationality and paranoia is convincing. I love the way the unease is slowly stoked, and Kim starts to see menace in even the most benign locations of sunny Seagrave’s promenades, streets and bars. The small town vibes become very oppressive as the book progresses, especially as further disquieting mysteries are trickled into the mix.
Although a modern psychological thriller, “We Were Seen” has fun shades of a traditional whodunit. Just like our unfortunate protagonist, we suspect that the blackmailer is someone she knows – or has at least met – and there are a great cast of well-written players to choose from.
As well as the obviously nefarious characters such as Glover – the unethical tycoon wanting to build the golf course – and the creep stalking her, we wonder who else might be involved. Her social circle includes several lecturers and staff at the college, her grandfather and his photographer protégé, as well as other councillors, locals, and friends from the golf course protest group. They’re all fully-rounded, but often just enigmatic enough so that we can’t completely eliminate them from suspicion.
This is what I enjoyed. Kim’s paranoia, even though perfectly justified, is infectious. As readers, we start to be wary of everything and everyone; the sinister in the mundane is a great tool and perfectly applied here.
This novel is easy to read with lucid prose and a well-gauged pace, and very compulsive; I found it very easy to lose myself to just one more chapter. This is all the more impressive in that its page-turning quality doesn’t need to come from chapter cliffhangers or sudden jeopardy. It instills a desire to read on purely from the mounting insidious tone.
After this ratcheting of baleful atmosphere throughout the book, the finale is breathtaking and dark. The last few chapters are grim, exciting and genuinely unputdownable. I was gripped, hunched over the page and unblinking as the real world faded to irrelevance around me, which is not something that happens very often.
“We Were Seen” left me satisfied – as everything falls neatly into place – and also in need of a breather from the twist and reveal. It’s also credit to Mark West’s mastery of the writing craft that I was left with the feeling I’d actually been to Seagrave and met all these people, thanks to his knack for characterisation and creating a palpable sense of place.
It definitely won’t be as long as last time before I read another of his books. In fact, his list of thriller novels on The Book Folks site is calling out to me right now. If this review has piqued your interest, you could certainly do a lot worse than visiting it yourself.
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