Location: Australia
Member Since:
May 03, 2012
David Pask
Smashwords book reviews by David Pask
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The Mind Man
on May 03, 2012
Peter Richmond’s debut novel “The Mind Man” is a really good read. He has managed to fulfil a childhood dream of creating a supernatural thriller based on long-held themes and motifs from his own experience. Richmond’s prose is based on a skilled use of dialogue, which produces narrative drive, interspersed with multiple third person points of view, depending on which character is seeing the action. The novel is well paced and takes you from the backwaters of an Australian wheat-farming town, across the world to the West Coast of America, and thence to the Cook Islands, London, Africa, Northern Iraq, Sydney and Boston. I particularly liked the change of scenery that the globetrotting theme demands. The monotonous Aussie outback contrasts with the rich man’s materialist world in America, as it does, too, with the snow-capped mountains in the North of Iraq. The characters in the novel are similarly varied, from the main Australian character of Adam, his equally mysterious love interest, Caren, to the ethical American cop, Ted, his flirtatious wife, Sally, the English journalist, Laura, and the scientist Dr Zimmerman to name but a few of them. Richmond has managed to tie together multiple events, characters, motifs, and plot-lines, without sacrificing the forward movement of the underlying mystery/horror. The ending is particularly clever as it pulls the reader back to the beginning. While reading this novel the American fantasy novels of Stephen King came to mind. I would recommend it to anyone who would like a fun and thrilling read.