Fault Lines

September 17, 2018
In this overwrought whodunit from British author Johnstone (Crash Land), volcanologist Surtsey Mackenzie, a member of a team studying the Inch, an island that recently formed in the Firth of Forth off Edinburgh, makes a series of bad choices, beginning with sleeping with her married boss, Tom Lawrie. One day, she arrives on the Inch for a rendezvous with Tom, only to find seabirds feeding on his corpse. Anxious to keep her affair a secret, Surtsey retrieves the cellphone Tom used exclusively for contacting her, and flees the Inch without reporting his death, which is discovered the next day when her research group visits the island. The police treat the death as a possible homicide, and Surtsey is freaked out when someone sends ominous texts to her on Tom’s phone. Johnstone tosses in more melodrama—Surtsey’s mother is in hospice, nearing the end of her battle with cancer—before providing an unsurprising reveal and an implausible denouement. The unusual island setting is about this book’s only virtue. Agent: Philip Patterson, Marjacq (U.K.).

October 1, 2018
The curious (and very cool) thing about this new novel by Scottish writer Johnstone is the fact that the alternate Scotland he's created for the book is, strictly speaking, not necessary to tell the story. This is a cracking-good thriller with some seriously good writing and some beautifully designed characters. Surtsey Mackenzie finds the body of her secret lover on a volcanic island, decides not to mention it to anyone, receives text messages from someone who obviously knows about Surtsey's deception, and eventually confronts her tormentor in the book's violent finale. Johnstone could have done without describing new volcanoes popping up in the Firth of Forth, and, in fact, a more traditional approach would have resulted in a solid thriller; but setting the story in an environment of fiery, tumultuous geologic upheaval? A nice touch, that. Downright brilliant. Here's a writer pushing the thriller envelope, giving the reader not just a good novel, but also a unique one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)