Adrian McKinty has always been revered by crime fiction aficionados for bringing touches of literary styling, and great intelligence, to superior genre plots. Then he became famous for the brilliant thriller, The Chain (my review), and now, with “The Island,” he seems set for thriller stardom. Drawing on his time in Melbourne, McKinty brings a slab of Deliverance to the Victorian coastline, imagining a tiny island dominated by a redneck family. When a family of four impulsively ferries across, tragedy strikes and suddenly meek Rachel faces down existential crisis after crisis, as she strives to keep them all alive against the odds. As I said, McKinty is an inspired plotter, twisting events into skeins at once logical and unexpected. The pace is breakneck, the writing is pitch-perfect, and the climax is fraught. The Island is a humdinger thriller, snap it up.
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