#BlogTour ‘Consumed’ by Greg Buchanan

About the book…

A slick, smart, stylish – and shocking – thriller from one of the most exciting new voices in crime fiction.

On a lonely farmstead, a 70-year-old woman falls down outside and, unable to move, is consumed overnight by two of her pigs.

It seems like a tragic accident, except the woman was well-known photographer Sophia Bertilak – and inside her house, someone has removed all her photos from their frames, seemingly erasing her past…

The first photo Sophia ever took remains her most a missing girl who was never seen again. Forensic veterinarian Cooper Allen is drafted in for the post-mortem – and slowly becomes obsessed with the victim, her family, and the crimes she brought to light decades ago.

As Cooper pulls on a dark thread of deception, secrets and lies, she begins to unravel the case – as well as herself.

My thanks to Tracy at Compulsive Readers for the blog tour invite, and publishers Orion for my gifted review copy of ‘Consumed’ by Greg Buchanan which is available from all good bookshops from July 20th!

There is a scene in Psycho, where the camera focuses on the still pupil of Janet Leigh, and slowly pans back, bringing the film goer into the full horror of her death scene, and building this terrible sense of awareness and clarity just in a matter of seconds.

In Consumed, the first chapter does this as well, you aren’t really sure what exactly is happening and then all of a sudden, it solidifies into the stuff of nightmares and you are gripped, stuck and going nowhere until you finish this book.

Horrifying, grotesque and yet strangely intimate and beautiful, this is a book which you will remember reading for a long, long, time.

Here, forensic veterinarian Cooper Allen, is asked to consult on a case whilst on a pre-holiday sojourn in Lethwick. Her mother and sister have taken it upon themselves to book all 3 a holiday, and this strained relationship with years between seeing and talking to each other, needs a ‘bedding in’ process in order for Cooper to mentally prepare herself for familial doings.

The unfortunate pigs, previously mentioned, are slaughtered in order to try and establish whether the death of Sophia Bertilak is intentional or accidental, and whether there is any link between her death, and her most in-famous photograph, taken decades earlier.

An off key note is present from the very first sentence, leaving you determined to unpick the whys and wherefores of Sophia’s photo, for which she became infamous even before she ever trained her eye, and for which she was always known for, a bone of contention for a perfectionist that has led to a life lived through a very public lens.

In contrast, you have a very different protagonist who has the weight of expectation and this fractured family background which is deeply intriguing and makes you want to know more about her whilst also wanting to leave a little opacity for future novels (crosses fingers in hope!)

Each short chapter is like a detail of an overall picture which finally coalesced as you approach the denouement, leaving you frantic to find out what has happened whilst also slowing down to savour each step in the process.

Consumed is the perfect title as it pulls you in, and in doing so, allows you to be immersed in a consumptive act, whilst also being, yourself, consumed.

In short, it is a magnificent and bold feat of literature that transcends what we know as the mystery genre.

About the author…

Greg Buchanan is a BAFTA-longlisted writer for interactive and screen. His acclaimed debut novel ‘Sixteen Horses’ was selected for BBC Two’s Between The Covers and was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month. A TV adaptation produced by Gaumont Television is on the way.

Greg also teaches a writing interactive narrative workshop, see his website for further details.

Greg studied English at the University of Cambridge and completed a PhD at King’s College London in identification and ethics. He is a graduate of UEA’s Creative Writing MA.

Links-https://www.gregbuchanan.co.uk/

Twitter @gregbuchanan @Tr4cyF3nton @orionbooks