Disordered Daggers : The Poison Garden by Alex Marwood (2019)

[gervase_fen]

 

From the publisher’s back cover copy:

“Where Romy grew up, if someone died you never spoke of them again.

Now twenty-two, she has recently escaped the toxic confines of the cult she was raised in. But Romy is young, pregnant and completely alone - and if she is to keep herself safe in this new world, she has some important lessons to learn.

Like how there are some people you can trust, and some you must fear. And about who her family really is, and why her mother ran away from them all those years ago.

And that you can't walk away from a dark past without expecting it to catch up with you...”

Alex Marwood’s thriller has a delicious SF-nal vibe to it in the flashback scenes depicting Romy’s childhood and adolescence  in the cult her mother joins, a guru-lead commune following the edicts of “Father” on acres of Welsh farmland. The contemporary narrative strand is equally gripping – Romy’s only relative in the outside world, her aunt Sarah, gains an instant family which she is barely equipped to deal with (Romy and Eden and Ilo, two young, school age children, the only other survivors found at Plas Golau). (Equally SF-ish is the Midwich Cuckoos / Chrysalids status of said children.)

Alex Marwood’s storytelling is exemplary, with some political bite – this is the first crime novel that I’ve read that namechecks the last leader of the Labour Party, and draws parallels between faith in Magic Grandpa and the cruelties that can result from mass devotion. Reading this now seemed especially resonant – Father’s cult teachings are predicated on a belief that the world will be ending very soon, and although completed before the current crisis, the ending sets up the potential for a very contemporary sequel. Highly recommended.