Reviewer: Andrea
I received a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
The Summary:
A dark, ultra-contemporary, and relentlessly paced debut thriller about a London society woman trying to put her secret criminal past behind her, and the hit man who comes to her with an impossible job she can’t refuse.
Charlotte Alton is an elegant socialite. But behind the locked doors of her sleek, high-security apartment in London’s Docklands, she becomes Karla. Karla’s business is information. Specifically, making it disappear. She’s the unseen figure who, for a commanding price, will cover a criminal’s tracks. A perfectionist, she’s only made one slip in her career—several years ago she revealed her face to a man named Simon Johanssen, an ex-special forces sniper turned killer-for-hire. After a mob hit went horrifically wrong, Johanssen needed to disappear, and Karla helped him. He became a regular client, and then, one day, she stepped out of the shadows for reasons unclear to even herself. Now, after a long absence, Johanssen has resurfaced with a job, and he needs Karla’s help again. The job is to take out an inmate—a woman—inside an experimental prison colony. But there’s no record the target ever existed. That’s not the only problem: the criminal boss from whom Johanssen has been hiding is incarcerated there. That doesn’t stop him. It’s Karla’s job to get him out alive, and to do that she must uncover the truth. Who is this woman? Who wants her dead? Is the job a trap for Johanssen or for her? But every door she opens is a false one, and she’s getting desperate to protect a man—a killer—to whom she’s inexplicably drawn. Written in stylish, sophisticated prose, The Distance is a tense and satisfying debut in which every character, both criminal and law-abiding, wears two faces, and everyone is playing a double game.
The Review:
Typically, the thriller genre is not my favorite. I’m not a huge fan of espionage, secrets with secrets stashed inside them and wrapped in a bow of deception, but this novel really surprised me. I couldn’t put it down and felt as wiped as Karla’s computer by the end of my nonstop read-a-thon. The constant spinning of the plot will have you as dizzy as kid in a tire swing by the time you reach the shocking conclusion. While I couldn’t identify with the characters’ lives, I felt completely immersed in this high-risk world of devilish violence and impossible endings. The novel is light on love (a bit disappointing for a romantic like me) and heavy on action, but the thwarted love between Simon and Karla is enough to keep you wondering.
Though I enjoyed the novel, I had a few issues. Its face pace is both an asset and a liability. When I began, I wondered if this novel was a sequel. I felt very lost for a chapter or two before I worked out the characters and their “jobs.” The profusion of description hampered my progress to the point I began skimming large chunks. Every broken pane of glass, every piece of trash, every street name—it felt heavy-handed and overdone, adding an insufferable amount to the length. Also, be prepared for long exposition for each character. Some is necessary in order to create the relationships between Karla and these “extras,” but so many of those back stories felt as extraneous as the Hawthorne-ish description. And the violence is beyond cringe worthy, not for the faint of heart.
I enjoyed reading your review. I just started this book.