Review | Here and Gone by Haylen Beck
Audra Kinney has finally left her abusive husband. With her two young children, Sean and Louise, Audra makes her way across America for a fresh start on the West coast. Trying to keep a low-profile, Audra avoids the highways. It is on a country road in rural Arizona that she notices something in her rear-view mirror – a police cruiser with its lights flashing. Her dream start is about to become a nightmare.
Debut?
This is Haylen Beck’s debut novel, Haylen Beck being a pen name for seasoned crime writer Stuart Neville, this novel feels every inch the product of an experienced storyteller. Here and Gone is a well-polished pot boiler and Beck judges each chapter absolutely perfectly. From the closing words of the first chapter the reader is drawn into not only the life of Audra Kinney but of her fears as well. Fear is massive element of Here and Gone, Audra has lived in fear her entire married life, being physical, mentally and emotionally abused by her vile husband Patrick. She is afraid of her future, what might it bring, especially now that she has her two young children with her and is on the run. And that is why you love Audra, she has nowhere to go but no intention of going back to where she came from and still she is taking these steps.
Audra is a great character and Beck is very careful not to portray her as a victim. A reformed alcoholic and victim of spousal abuse, she could have come across as a pathetic, beaten character but she is not. Audra Kinney is someone to celebrate, not commiserate. She is not the only well drawn character, Danny Lee, or Knifeboy as he is occasionally referenced, is a great personality, one that walks in the shadows between light and dark. He is neither a good guy nor a bad guy, he’s just someone doing what he thinks is morally right, even if that does involve taking names and kicking ass. He has his own motivation, something that stems from the same problem that Audra faces. Of all the characters in the novel, Danny Lee is the one that I would most like to see in a potential sequel, he has the most scope and space to develop and change. Plus he’s just not in the novel enough, he is the most interesting of Beck’s creations and deserves a standalone series.
Heroes & Villains
Of course, for every hero we must have a villain and that comes in the shape of Sheriff Ronald Whiteside. Whiteside is a boo hissable bad guy, he’s someone that is easy to hate but unfortunately just not easy enough to understand. He has no redeeming features and this works against him for the most part as the reader as nothing he does resonates with the reader as being something they could even remotely identify with. He’s bad, absolutely, but he is also human and we are just not exposed to that side of his character.
One of Beck’s problems with the novel is how he draws the characters, some are well defined and almost step off the page and into your life, Audra Kinney and Danny Lee being two. Unfortunately, Whiteside and his deputy Collins are only barely sketched with Collins in particular failing to generate any emotional connection with the reader. Collins is really just a tool of exposition by the author – every chance he gets he explains that Collins is doing what she’s doing because she needs the money for her sick son. Never once do we see them together and while introducing her ailing son would have slowed the novel’s breakneck pace, it would also have added a depth to her character that is sorely missing. Audra’s children are also a little too superficial as well, there is no attempt to flesh them out. Yes, they are presented with a terrible situation but the feeling of peril, the sense that they could be in some sort of danger is never fully realised and so they too get caught up in the great dash from one signposted plot point to another.
Expert Pacing
Beck’s trump card is his pacing though, the novel hurtles along at a delicious speed that encourages the reader to keep turning page after page. It is a relentless assault on the senses which make it very easy to pick this book up in daylight and suddenly realise that it’s dark outside. Never once in the novel is there a period of trudge, of having to labour through the plot to get to the end of a chapter. That last line to chapter 5 will absolutely chill any parent reading the book!! While saying that, this novel does smack of the formulaic. It is very much an A to B to C type of narrative and throws no curveballs or surprises at you bar that end of chapter 5. In that sense, it is maddeningly frustrating as you wait and wait and wait for a twist or a character change that never comes. It really is paint by numbers plotting and while his plot momentum is brilliant it very much smacks of “and then, and then, and then…” type of storytelling.
Here and Gone is a good read that may very well keep you turning the pages until well after midnight, it is very enjoyable and lively but unfortunately it lacks depth. It is never dull, but it just isn’t as interesting as it should have been.
