Black Flowers [Paperback]

I don't read tons of crime fiction - I'm a dabbler. But Steve Mosby's name has been floating around the part of my mind devoted to the ever-present `what book to read next?' question for some time, partly because of his excellent short stories in both Off The Record 1 and Off The Record 2 - At The Movies - A Charity Anthology (47 Short Stories with Classic Film Titles), and partly from seeing a recommendation for his book Black Flowers from Ramsey Campbell.

So I was expecting this one to be a bit tasty. I wasn't wrong.

Black Flowers tells the story (and I use that word deliberately) of Neil Dawson, a young writer looking into the apparent suicide of his father, who was also a writer. His investigations dig up not just real life clues, but links to his father's writing and that of another writer, who wrote a book called The Black Flower. Extracts from that book feature as a story within a story in Black Flowers.

Things get even stranger when a story that Neil wrote himself, expressing some of his temporary unease at the idea of becoming a father, seems to start to come true. And it wasn't a pleasant story; not at all.

His partner is kidnapped, and the only way to save her appears to be to understand events buried in the past, and in the pages of The Black Flower. Side by side with this, the book also tells of Hannah Price, a police detective also finding out disturbing things about her own father and the stories he may have told her...

Black Flowers is obsessed with the way stories and narrative shape our lives - and not just stories in books, but those told to us by those we trust. The book presents two opposing, but equally disturbing ideas. Firstly that the stories we have based our beliefs and principles around might actually be false, and that one day we might find our world crumbling as we face up to that. But secondly, that stories have power over our lives regardless of whether they are true or false; that as well as fearing stories turning out to be false we should also fear stories that might start to become all too true.

Lots of books that use meta-fictional trickery do so in a playful way, but Black Flowers plays it straight off the bat and is as dark as hell. It's this, over and above the horrifying specifics of the crimes featured in the story, that for me makes this book as much horror as a crime novel. I've blogged before about how I don't view horror as a genre as such, but as an ingredient that features in many books that aren't marketed as such. Mosby certainly seems to prove my point here, although the crime genre elements are equally strong and gripping.

The prose is tight, the setting vivid, the characters realistic (even the doubly-fictional ones in the book within a book). Most memorable for me is the imagery of the black flowers themselves, and what the reader comes to understand they represent...

So all in all, very strongly recommended. Dark, clever, and compelling. As I said, I knew it would be a bit tasty.

Just finished this remarkable book. By turns, it is deliciously creepy and morbidly addictive. Child abduction thrillers can be a tricky deal to pull off. When handled with care they provide a harrowing, yet compulsive read, but sometimes the author gets it so badly wrong I've been known to cheer on the serial killer. Mosby's Russian Doll approach, using stories set within stories, sets him miles apart from most of his contemporaries. The prose is sharp and perfectly frames the powerful imagery of the Black Flowers themselves.

This is a book about loss and transformation and secrets buried in unmarked graves. If you don't enjoy Steve Mosby - I advise you to visit your local B&Q and buy a shovel. Next, find a quiet field, dig a deep hole and lie down comfortably. At some point I'll be along to fill in the hole.

Opening with the appearance of a small girl holding a black flower on a seafront, this story instantly has you hooked. Full of psychological impact, it burrows into your mind from the first page, and comfortably sets up camp in its dark recesses until the last page.

Neil Dawson always wanted to be a writer like his father. Neil has a pregnant girlfriend, and a job he doesn't want to do for the rest of his life. He begins writing a short story, and it becomes apparent that the main theme is veering towards his trepidation about fatherhood. When said father commits suicide, Neil sets about retracing his life to find answers as to why his father killed himself. Then his girlfriend is abducted, and Neil is thrust into the world of The Black Flower, a seemingly ordinary piece of fiction which Neil soon realises seems to mirror real life events.

Another thread of the story deals with Hannah Price, who joined the police following in her father's footsteps. Finding evidence of something from her own father's past sets up a heart-stopping, emotional ride in which the lines between fact and fiction are blurred. Her story intertwines with Neil's as she uncovers the truth behind the dark secret her father carried for years.

Mosby's writing sets the bar high for crime fiction, guiding the reader to images both beautiful and horrific via imaginative prose. He turns seemingly ordinary settings into much more, going beneath the surface and exploring surroundings in a way some modern writers do not. Neil's character is well drawn and it's impossible not to empathise with him and the supporting characters while the plot twists and turns. Black Flowers was my favourite book of 2011.

Whilst it is perhaps easy to describe Black Flowers as a book within a book, with passages from the novel Neil finds in his father's affects being referred to throughout, it is much more than this. I particularly enjoyed the exploration of the relationships both the main characters had with there fathers. While not quite as gory as his past books, this novel is nonetheless remarkable for its dark imagery, and one of the most macabre and horrifying reveals I've read in crime fiction. It is a dark psychological thriller, incorporating crime and horror elements, creating a novel which is hard to fit into any one genre other than excellent.