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The Dying Light
 
 

The Dying Light (Hardcover)

by Henry Porter (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
RRP: £12.99
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Orion (6 Aug 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0752874845
  • ISBN-13: 978-0752874845
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 2,059 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #1 in  Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Thrillers > Spy Stories

Product Description

Review

'Major new thriller by the campaigning British journalist about today's Britain as a police state. Porter is adept at spinning a credible yarn and the book could well prove highly controversial' (THE BOOKSELLER )

'Former spook Kate Lockhart is enraged by the violent death of her old lover, David Eyam, head of British Intelligence. Even more chilling is the legacy he leaves behind which is set to spin the UK into a police state' (Henry Sutton DAILY MIRROR )

'In Henry Porter's exciting, timely and frightening story, a single brave, prescient individual eventually outwits megalomaniac officialdom. This book is primarily a can't-put-it-down , rattling good yarn but it's also a deadly serious and truly awful warning' (Jessica Mann LITERARY REVIEW )

'A daring, stylish and tensely paced thriller that brilliantly imagines the consequences for Joe Public should some of the government's suggested security proposals become law' (METRO )

'Worthwhile and gripping conspiracy thriller' (MORNING STAR )

'Henry Porter's latest conspiracy thriller is neatly designed, elegantly written and, politically, a little subversive' ...The theme and plot do, however, meet in one particularly satisfying set piece that demonstrates the value of having a good defence lawyer, one of the several moments that places The Dying Light among the higher ranks of its genre' (Robert Murphy METRO )

'For those who like political thrillers, this is one of the season's best: scary, informative and, alas, eminently believable' (ECONOMIST )

'He is widely recognised now as a real master of the literary espionage thriller, a true sucessor to le Carre' (PRESS GAZETTE )

'You'll love this brilliantly tense novel' - Five Stars (HEAT )

'If you're looking for a holiday read which will leave you gasping for breath then this one would take some beating' (THE BOOKBAG )

'The Dying Light bowls along at a cracking pace with more twists and turns than a street map of Venice' (INDEPENDENT )

'Porter rails against that very British apathy which has already allowed the state to pass all the legislation necessary to turn his dystopian nightmare into reality - the same apathy, ironically, which makes such nakedly polemical British novels so rare, and welcome' (Jeremy Jehu DAILY TELEGRAPH )

'A gripping and thought-provoking thriller' (CHOICE )

'In the Dying Light, he has created a fearsome vision of how existing legislation - particularly the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 - could be used by a paranoiac government intent on total control... a timely cautionary tale' (NEW STATESMAN )

'the book is a salutary warning of what happens when big business and politics end up in bed together. I'm sure some with think Porter to be paranoid. The rest of us will feel it's terrifyingly plausible' (REVIEWING THE EVIDENCE.COM )

'A tense, intelligent conspiracy thriller set in a horribly plausible future-present Britain where surveillance is so pervasive that it's impossible to do anything unobserved' (John O'Connell THE GUARDIAN )

'Porter has all the talents of a good thriller writer, particularly strong, crisp characterisation and the ability seamlessly to blend action and expertise. What really stands out in this novel, though, is the grimly plausible glimpse he gives us of a future that is already creeping up on us: a United Kingdom where elements of government and corporate interests are combining to monitor and ultimately control the lives of the country's citizens' (SPECTATOR )

'The Dying Light offers pleasures on every page, from descriptions of the English countryside and several alluring characters, to the puzzles Eyam set; from the outrage generated by politicians' monstrosities to the sly neatness of his analysis of their activities' (Natasha Cooper TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT )

'a compelling and engaging tale of intrigue set in the near future' (Michael Mansfield THE OBSERVER )

'Disturbingly chilling' (NEW BOOKS )


Product Description

At his funeral the bells of the church were rung open rather than half-muffled, as is usual for the dead. Kate Lockhart has come with corporate leaders, ministers and intelligence chiefs to a beautiful town in the Welsh Marches to mourn her soul mate, David Eyam, the brightest government servant of his generation. All that remains of Eyam are the burnt fragments of a man killed far from home in a devastating explosion. But Eyam has left a devastating legacy and certain members of the congregation on that bitterly cold March day are desperate to suppress it. A group of locals come to feel the full weight of the state's determination. Kate Lockhart, now a Mergers and Acquisitions lawyer from Manhattan but a former SIS officer in Indonesia is equal to Eyam's legacy . She becomes the focus of the state's paranoiac power and leads the local resistance to it, with all the cunning of her former trade, directed from beyond the grave by Eyam. The state is no match for the genius of the dead.

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Customer Reviews

14 Reviews
5 star:
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3 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping and thought-provoking, 29 Aug 2009
By N. Smith - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Henry Porter has written one of the best thrillers I've ever read. The Dying Light is set in Britain in the near future, where the tentacles of the surveillance state have been extending their reach throughout society. Our rulers are driven by misguided paternalism; their sense of right and wrong has been subverted by the inevitably corrupting influence of unaccountable power.

The heroine, Kate Lockhart, is thrown into a dangerous attempt to uncover the rotteness of the government after her estranged best friend is killed in a bomb blast and puts her unwillingly in the centre of a last-ditch effort to save British democracy.

The best thing about this book is Mr Porter's characterisation: he vividly describes all the actors in the drama. He introduces us to an unlikely band of heroes and villains, and people sitting uneasily inbetween. All the characters have human doubts and fears, but those on the good side also burn brightly with a deeply human longing to live freely and make their own decisions about their own lives. They retain a moral compass that the government lost long ago thanks to the death of ideology and to the cult of managerialism and centralisation.

Though it would be wrong to expose the twists and surprises in the plot (of which there are enough to make the book almost impossible to put down!), it is worth stressing - as Mr Porter does in his Afterword - that all the laws used and abused by his fictional government are already on the statute book. So on one level this book is a frightening and thought-provoking exposé of a country that has sleep-walked into putting too much trust to politicians and civil servants who rarely reciprocate by trusting the people to get on with their own lives without nannying or worse. The only thing standing between Britain in 2009 and Mr Porter's fiction is the relative decency of our current rulers.

At the same time The Dying Light is also an uplifting story of the bravery of some very human people in the face of authoritarianism run rampant. In this way it reminds me of the outstanding film The Lives Of Others: just as the film movingly depicts the heroism of the dissident and of the Stasi officer whose humanity makes him rebel against the machine in which he is a human cog, the key characters of this book include both public servants whose moral qualms trump deference to authority and would-be free spirits. Buy this book - you will finish it in a few sittings but you will have much food for thought well after you read the last page.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Superb!, 6 Aug 2009
By B. Moyes "Arabella Sushi" (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Intelligent and revelatory, The Dying Light is the best political thriller I've read in ages (and I include Robert Harris' The Ghost in that). I don't want to give too much away, but although The Dying Light is set in the near future the issues and plot of the novel are very much about Britain today. A superb thriller.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Utterly outstanding, 28 Aug 2009
By James Faux "jacf7" (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I have read all Henry Porter's books and this is without doubt his best, an absolutely outstanding story, well-paced with excellent characters and, central to it, a salutary warning of the direction the government of modern Britain is inexorably moving.

What is particularly authentic is that his depiction of a near-future Britain. He illustrates the clear risks of the kind of system that is purported in the novel, when this is allied to ministerial and government agency incompetence, to frightening effect. Porter never actually reveals exactly what year the story is set in, except that it is after the 2012 London Olympics and this fact strikes a potent tone in itself, given much of the legislation already exists. The novel creates one of the most telling "wake-up calls" I've ever read.

There's a definite Orwellian theme, if you will excuse the clichéd reference, and his portrayal of this type of Britain has a telling and authentic resonance to it; you could almost classify this as a parable that the pursuit of absolute power, and absolute control, corrupts absolutely, without those doing so even being truly aware of this and seeing what they are doing as being inherently "good" and deciding on the best interests of the populace.

This novel may prove controversial to some, but it shouldn't; for others, it represents a true warning, as many of the points Porter makes in his narrative and in his afterword are extremely thought-provoking, yet the story and the reading of it is absolutely compelling.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars A real page-turner, and yet ...
I read this novel in a couple of days and was always eager to return to it; and yet it left me feeling somehow unsatisfied, as if there was a better book inside struggling to get... Read more
Published 17 days ago by S. B. Kelly

4.0 out of 5 stars Prescient But Light On Thrills
Anyone who has read any of Henry Porter's articles in the Observer newspaper or his Guardian blog will be familiar with the issues The Dying Light deals with; namely the threat to... Read more
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3.0 out of 5 stars the dying light - little more than a glimmer?
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