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Shrike By Joe Donnelly     Like most of Joe Donnelly's books, Shrike is set in Scotland. The main character is a policeman called jack Fallon. After a seance goes wrong something evil is unleashed into the town of Levenford. Something with claws and teeth, that likes the dark and high places. That is where the story begins and Jack is heading the team that is investigating the death of the old woman who chaired the seance. The crime scene furnishes more questions, for Jack, than answers. Jack's next case is likewise as perplexing when he is called in to investigate the disappearance of a baby from its pram. Then other children start to go missing and, on top of that, Jack has a sudden string of murders and suicides to investigate too. All work and no play might very well make Jack a dull boy, but in a situation like this, what can he do? He works around the clock. The killer might like high places, but Jack does not. He hates heights, and I was filled with admiration for the way Jack plodded on onwards and upwards whenever he needed to and did not let his fear control him. I am not a lover of heights myself and the book contains a few scenes that I found quite uncomfortable to read because they scared me so much. All of these scenes involved a tall chimney and they were very descriptive and well written. As I read the scenes I almost felt like I was the one climbing up to the top of the chimney and it is the first time that I have ever felt dizzy just from reading the written word. It is strange to say that I have even watched films about mountain climbers or berserk roller coasters and never once felt the terror that I felt when reading Shrike. The 'high points' of Shrike, as you can tell, made a big impression on me. Shrike is quite a long book though (576 pages) and there were a few chapters where it failed to hold my attention and my mind started to wander. Jack is an interesting main character. He lost his wife and daughter in an accident and is still trying to come to terms with that fact. Mostly he seems to throw himself into his work so that he is too busy to think about the accident, but he also has a great love for his sister and young nephew who, between them, seem to have helped him through the worst of it. Jack isn't the only interesting character in Shrike, there are plenty of others, and the young Librarian Lorna Breck is one of them. Lorna is new to Levenford and, although she has always been a little psychically gifted, her gift suddenly becomes an overpowering nightmare for her as she is forced to witness, in her mind's-eye the terrible atrocities that are being carried out in the town. When I write a review I often like to mention who the guy, or gal, was that I loved to hate. Well, in Shrike that person would have to be one of Jack's superiors at the station, Ronald Cowie. Ronald Cowie is a knob. Not the kind of knob that you would want to stick on a door though. He is the kind of knob who's head you would like to put through a door. He makes Jack's life hard at every opportunity and is perhaps more of a politician than a policeman. I enjoyed reading Shrike, but I think that I might have enjoyed it even more if it had been condensed down a bit to quicken the pace. List of Joe Donnelly books reviewed on this site HOME