The Shadow Friend by ​ALEX NORTH

A complex page-turning thriller with supernatural overtones

Alex North’s The Whisper Man was one of my favourite thrillers of 2019, a startling debut which balanced perfectly the mainstream page-turner with serial-killer horror and the threat of the supernatural. The Shadow Friend is another standalone thriller, with a fresh set of characters, interestingly, it does mention in passing the shocking events of the previous novel, but you can read this without having read the former. Stylistically, however, it is very similar to its predecessor, moving between two timelines which are years apart with a similar supernatural whiff, which is probably stronger in this book and keeps the reader dangling until the end.
 
If you’re after a page-turner I highly recommend both novels, but The Whisper Man narrowly shades The Shadow Friend, mainly because it is slightly more unsettling and is built around a more striking villain, but it’s a close call. Both plots are fiendishly clever, with lots of red herrings, twists and top-loaded with incredibly damaged characters. No more so than the police officers leading the prospective investigations.
 
I’m going to be vague with the plot as I do not want to provide too many spoilers, many other reviews provide way too much detail, so watch what you read. After Paul’s elderly mother has an accident at home, and is moved into hospital, he returns to the town where he was brought up but has not visited in over 25 years. This is the fictional small-town of ‘Gritten’, which might remind you of a thousand small dying English towns. We quickly find out that Paul had a difficult relationship with his parents and in flashback the plot returns to when he was fifteen and forced to move schools, along with his best friend James, due to low pupil numbers. In the new school they become friends with Charlie and Billy, the former becoming the ringleader of the gang. Charlie is a charismatic character who fends off bullies and winds up teachers, but also believes that through experimentation people can share dreams, he calls this ‘lucid dreaming’ and so the boys start experimenting. Interestingly, Paul’s part of the story is told in the first-person narrative and in due course you’ll realise why.
 
The friendship dynamics of the teenage boys was a real strength of the novel, apart from James none of the boys were true misfits but found strength in their own tight-knit group. I’m sure many readers will see some of themselves in these boys, passing Steven King novels amongst each other and having adventures in the local woods until girls appeared on the horizon. The middle-aged Paul’s reflection on these times was spot on, nostalgic in spells but with the darkness lurking at the periphery of vision. Alex North is excellent at leading the reader up the garden path and with the first-person narrative anything is possible. It’s one of those “Just one more chapter” before bed kind of books. When you’re in the moment it is a very addictive read.
 
The second narrative, in the present day, concerns Detective Amanda Beck who is, by contrast, presented in the third person. Amanda is investigating the murder of a teenage boy in a neighbouring town and slowly connects the two cases after meets the adult Paul who remains haunted by the events of 25 years ago. Whilst caring for his sick mother he realises someone is intent on reminding him of those events, shocking him, or even worse.

There is a lot going on in The Shadow Friend and it is much more than a straight-forward thriller. It is creepy, dark and compelling and you’ll need your wits about you as there are a lot of characters and the story is far from straight forward, with a couple of outstanding twists thrown in. It is also a moving meditation on family relationships, how the past repeats itself and how difficult it is to break old patterns and escape your past as Paul finds out. When Paul returns to the town of Gritton there are memories everywhere, ghosts even, and that is exactly how it is when you revisit childhood haunts as an adult. This was pitched perfectly in the novel.
 
Part of the real strength of The Shadow Friend was the manner in which it held back exactly what happened back in the 1980s storyline, balancing this with a clever insight into urban legends, how they are born and the far reaching effects they can have, especially in the internet days. 
 
If you enjoyed The Whisper Man you will also get a kick out of The Shadow Friend, as it’s in the same ballpark and that’s no bad thing. This is a fine example of page-turning fiction with strong horror elements thrown into the mix.
 
4/5
 
Tony Jones

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