The Invisible Ones (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

I don't envy Stef Penney the task of writing a follow-up to the Costa Award-winning The Tenderness of Wolves, and I'm glad she's gone for something completely different rather than trying to emulate her phenomenally successful debut novel.

The Invisible Ones is at heart an old-fashioned murder mystery, complete with an accident-prone, unlucky in love private investigator in the shape of Ray Lovell. I warmed to Ray instantly (it probably helped that he reminded me a lot of Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie). When we first meet him he's lying in a hospital bed with no memory of how he got there. Through a series of flashbacks we learn that Ray was hired by Leon Wood to find out what happened to his daughter Rose who disappeared six years earlier, shortly after her arranged marriage to fellow Gypsy, Ivo Janko. It also transpires that Ray was chosen to investigate Rose's disappearance because he too is of Romany descent.

As we know from the recent TV documentaries, Gypsy and travelling communities tend to be very private and wary of outsiders. That is certainly the case with the Jankos (with good reason), but other than that this isn't an in-depth exposé of Gypsy life and culture. The Jankos aren't part of a large travelling community but are living on the edge of `normal' society, with some members holding down jobs and going to school. They keep themselves to themselves due to a `family curse', the hereditary blood disorder which has resulted in very few male children making it past puberty. Ivo suffered from it as a child and his son Christo is now badly afflicted by it.

Ray's investigation unearths a number of skeletons which the Jankos would prefer to keep buried. Along the way he encounters quite a few red herrings which send him (and the reader) off down the wrong path, and the final twist is a bit of a shocker which I only saw coming at the very last minute. So all in all a very enjoyable read, but once again I stress that it's a very different kettle of fish to TTOW so don't be expecting more of the same. I'd certainly recommend it to fans of Kate Atkinson and other intelligent/less gruesome crime writers, and I did wonder whether Stef Penney had any plans to turn it into a series - I think there's plenty of mileage left in Ray and I'd like to see him investigating other crimes, both within and outside of the travelling community.

I re-read 'Tenderness of Wolves' recently, and couldn't believe how good it was - I enjoyed it even more than the first time, and decided it was probably in my top three favourite novels of all time. It really is hard to believe that this is written by the same person. I couldn't really believe in any of the characters, and the child had such a stereotype 'I'm-a-child-aren't-I-cute-and-innocent' quality to him, I couldn't stomach it. It's annoyingly worthy in it's attempt to give you an insight into the gypsy community. And the plot! Less said about that, the better. The strange thing is that when I read a book like 'The Tenderness of Wolves', I am deeply awestruck at the ability of a human being to create a world and fill it with such fascinating characters, and use them to tell a gripping story in rich language. I know that I could never get anywhere near that level of creativity myself. With this one, I'm in danger of believing that I could have done better myself....

I loved Stef Penney's first novel, set in Canada in the 1860's and feared the leap to her second novel, set in England in the 1980's, was going to be too big. Of course I was wrong and fell in love with The Invisible Ones. It's as powerful and beautiful as her debut, but in a very different, more subtle way.
What starts off as a noir detective thriller soon becomes a mystery novel, the characters slowly working their way into you, becoming real people. And what a great pair they are (the story jumps back and forth with ease between two perspectives): the flawed and scarred private investigator and the innocent teenager, both with big hearts, both to some extend outsiders in the Romany world.
Stef Penney proves (again) to be a great storyteller, being able to describe places and people seemingly without ease, but with great beauty and strength, her pen (well - keyboard, I assume) sometimes as sharp as a knife. I willn't spoil the end for you, but it's not as farfetched as some readers apparently think... Just go with it.
It's a book that is intriguing from the start, growing on you as you read, becoming a page turner almost impossible to put down. After I finished, the two main characters lingered on in my head for a long time, the places kept haunting me, the strong atmosphere surrounding me. A mystery that's more than just about the plot, an imaginative book rooted in a real world, a treat.