A swift return to the world created in 2017’s The Real Town Murders, By the Pricking of her Thumb once again finds Adam Roberts’ private detective Alma investigating an impossible crime. Whereas last year’s issue was very much a ‘whodunnit’, the ultimate locked room mystery, Alma is now faced with a ‘whodunnit-to’?
The story takes place in R!-Town, which may stand for Real but is familiar to those along the M4 corridor as Reading. The Real – a mundane, near-future world mostly populated only by drones and auto-exercising sleepwalking humans – is the counterpart to The Shine, an infinite, virtual habitat, which is gradually stealing all of humanity’s attention.
Alma doesn’t use The Shine, and is thus perfectly positioned to investigate crimes in The Real, and she is hired by one of the Fab Four, the four richest people in the world who are competing to reach Absolute Wealth. One of them is dead, but who? This is the mystery that runs through By the Pricking of her Thumb.
The Real Town Murders was an homage to Alfred Hitchcock. Indeed, its very premise was based on a story Hitchcock wanted to tell but couldn’t find a way to complete. While the title may suggest Agatha Christie or William Shakespeare, By the Pricking of her Thumb is mostly concerned with the work of another auteur, Stanley Kubrick, although its set pieces are not as obvious in their reverence as the earlier work.
The style is typically Roberts – this is his eighteenth novel, plenty of time to establish that – and as such there will be little for anyone who has been turned off by his puns and pop-culture references in the past, but for fans, and those who have yet to discover his work, this is a treat. Roberts is at his best when he is creating likeable characters stranded in familiar yet unimaginable worlds, and Alma is a welcome returnee, his first.
Her world, established in The Real Town Murders (which is a recommended, if not essential, preface for any read of this novel), is still by turns strange and routine, but there is a freedom gained during the course of the novel which is exciting for any future encounters with our world-weary gumshoe. The wider world is a step away from our own (although the UK is still – again? – part of the EU), and Roberts has fun exercising his scientifictitious grey matter. Recommended if you enjoy a murder mystery and aren’t afraid to turn things on their head.
BY THE PRICKING OF HER THUMB / AUTHOR: ADAM ROBERTS / PUBLISHER: GOLLANCZ / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
