Obviously, this new title will be the main subject of my conversation today, but in keeping with the spirit of what I hope you’ll find a very dark thriller, I’ll also be reviewing ANTWERP, a macabre but very cool murder mystery from the pen of Nicholas Royle.
If you’re only here for the Nick Royle review, that’s absolutely fine, as always. You’ll find it, as usual, in the Thrillers, Chillers section at the lower end of today’s post.
First though, why don’t we talk a little bit about …
Before I say any more, here’s the official back-cover blurb, which I hope you’ll find interesting.
Jodie Martindale and her boyfriend were kidnapped six years ago. Her boyfriend was found dead the next week. Jodie was never seen again.
Journalist David Kelman, once a hotshot but now washed up, illegally comes into possession of Jodie’s brother's old phone. And on that phone is an unheard voicemail from two weeks ago. The voice is unmistakeably that of Jodie Martindale.
The message begins an obsession for Kelman - which takes him down a rabbit hole of lies, to a dark and deadly truth....
NEVER SEEN AGAIN is a my brand new stand-alone crime novel, though the eagle-eyed among you may notice one or two characters and institutions from earlier novels (all my thrillers take place in the same universe). Like my last novel, ONE EYE OPEN, it’s set on the Essex/Suffolk borderland, a district where stretches of beautiful countryside intersperse with towns that are not exactly blots on the landscape, but in social terms are a bit of a mess (a sort of microcosm of England itself, you might say).
Here, we follow the fortunes, or misfortunes, of one David Kelman, a former crime reporter for the Essex Examiner, a daily newspaper read county-wide, where, many years ago, after breaking a sensational story about local police corruption, he was instrumental in setting up Crime Beat, an office of investigative journalism, the operatives of which prided themselves on getting deep into the guts of the Essex criminal fraternity, a group that included every kind of malefactor, from gangsters to ex abusers to serial killers.
Energised by the horror of the crime, David Kelman and his associates got on the case, David, as always, attempting to circumnavigate the police enquiry, and on this occasion making a horrific mistake, which had devastating consequences.
When we join the action, six years have passed, Jodie Martindale hasn’t been heard of since and the Essex Examiner is defunct. David Kelman is still an investigative reporter, but now chasing dirty stories – which celeb is secretly sleeping with who, etc – for the gutter press. Former colleagues revile him, the cops mistrust him, and after falling out with him as a direct result of all this, his wife, Karen, left and took his kids with her (though David doesn’t consider himself much of a role model anyway), so now he lives alone, short on cash and minus respect.
Out of nowhere, David Kelman, the once-ace investigator, has a chance to redeem himself. But he knows that simply reporting this precious find won’t be good enough. If he wants to restore his reputation, and maybe do something good for a change, he has to find Jodie herself.
But it isn’t going to be easy. Because David Kelman is now on his own, with no back-up, no resources, and next to no money, and whoever the people are who’ve got her, they are stone cold killers …
Here, for your delectation, are a couple of choice excerpts:
It might be summer, but the pitch darkness was dank and chill. A stench of urine engulfed him; his feet kicked bottles and loose planks. He clicked his phone-light on, but the subterranean gloom only retreated a short distance. Every two yards, he paused to listen, but it was deathly quiet. When he came to a T-junction, the passage on the left ran about ten yards to the foot of a flight of concrete steps with a hint of daylight shimmering down. He ascended warily, reaching a switchback landing, where a single burned spoon lay in one of the corners.
‘Great place to spend your final days, Freddie.’
On the next floor, there were windows, but again they’d been covered by steel hoardings, which allowed in minimal daylight. From here, passageways led off in two different directions. The one in front led to more stairs, but the one on the left travelled a significant distance, passing various battered-open doorways. David waited again, listening.
He hadn’t planned what he was going to do once he got in here. Probably go from one flat to the next, looking for clues. Most likely, they’d show signs that vagrants had been living in them. Even here, on the landing of the first floor, there were tell-tale signs: crack phials, the occasional used syringe, but if there was anywhere where it was obvious the police had been, that would be the starting point.
After that, though, it was anyone’s guess what he might glean from this.
He went along the main corridor, steel-clad windows on his left, broken doorways on his right. There was nothing telling behind any of the latter. Fire-damaged walls, piles of masonry where ceilings had collapsed. His eyes were now attuning, however, and he came to an abrupt standstill when he saw what he thought was a figure waiting at the far end. He advanced again. Slower than before. The figure didn’t move, but the closer David drew, the more distinct it became.
Whoever it was, they were wearing black. But had they also painted their face white? …
HMP Brancaster, or Gull Rock, had terrifying renown. Britain had no death penalty, but most of the inmates there had no hope of release. Not only were they all lifers, in many cases they’d had tariffs imposed, minimum sentences to be served: thirty years, forty years, even fifty, while in several notorious cases no parole date would ever be granted at all. Horror stories had thus spread far and wide about a regime of ultimate punishment, the damned souls trapped there suffering as they did in no other prison in the UK …
A sharp electronic buzz broke Norm from his reverie. He peered up the towering slab of rivetted steel that was HM Brancaster’s inner gate.
He huddled deeper into his anorak, not that it was offering great protection against the swirling gusts of rain, and glanced irritably at the heavy cloud cover as another zigzag of lightning split it end-to-end. To think that all the way north from Colchester he’d seen nothing but blue skies and summer sun. How quickly, as he’d neared his destination, all that had changed.
With a hefty clunk, a single-door section of the gate swung inward.
Norm stepped through into semi-darkness. Bare brick walls stood to either side; damp paving stones lay under his feet. He pulled back his hood and unzipped his anorak as two unsmiling officers emerged from a side office, checked him over with a portable metal detector and then subjected him to a vigorous body search. He’d already been advised not to bother bringing a notebook or pen, as both would be taken off him. Instead, he’d equipped himself with his Dictaphone, which, despite having told the authorities about it beforehand, the officers regarded with grave suspicion before handing it back without comment.
One of them withdrew into his office, while the other indicated that Norm should accompany him. They left the gatehouse, passing along a covered corridor, on top of which the rain thundered. Through its high letterbox windows, he saw the glare of moving spotlights.
‘This the way prisoners are brought in?’ Norm asked.
The officer, a tall, angular, lugubrious sort, seemed surprised to have been addressed.
‘They come in round the back, by secure transport,’ he said. ‘They only see this side of the prison if they’re being released. And that almost never happens.’
‘So, all this stark functionalism …’ Norm tried to sound as if he was being light-hearted. ‘That’s purely for the visitors?’
‘Visitors?’ The officer cracked a smile.
It might be summer, but the pitch darkness was dank and chill. A stench of urine engulfed him; his feet kicked bottles and loose planks. He clicked his phone-light on, but the subterranean gloom only retreated a short distance. Every two yards, he paused to listen, but it was deathly quiet. When he came to a T-junction, the passage on the left ran about ten yards to the foot of a flight of concrete steps with a hint of daylight shimmering down. He ascended warily, reaching a switchback landing, where a single burned spoon lay in one of the corners.
‘Great place to spend your final days, Freddie.’
On the next floor, there were windows, but again they’d been covered by steel hoardings, which allowed in minimal daylight. From here, passageways led off in two different directions. The one in front led to more stairs, but the one on the left travelled a significant distance, passing various battered-open doorways. David waited again, listening.
He hadn’t planned what he was going to do once he got in here. Probably go from one flat to the next, looking for clues. Most likely, they’d show signs that vagrants had been living in them. Even here, on the landing of the first floor, there were tell-tale signs: crack phials, the occasional used syringe, but if there was anywhere where it was obvious the police had been, that would be the starting point.
After that, though, it was anyone’s guess what he might glean from this.
He went along the main corridor, steel-clad windows on his left, broken doorways on his right. There was nothing telling behind any of the latter. Fire-damaged walls, piles of masonry where ceilings had collapsed. His eyes were now attuning, however, and he came to an abrupt standstill when he saw what he thought was a figure waiting at the far end. He advanced again. Slower than before. The figure didn’t move, but the closer David drew, the more distinct it became.
Whoever it was, they were wearing black. But had they also painted their face white? …
*
HMP Brancaster, or Gull Rock, had terrifying renown. Britain had no death penalty, but most of the inmates there had no hope of release. Not only were they all lifers, in many cases they’d had tariffs imposed, minimum sentences to be served: thirty years, forty years, even fifty, while in several notorious cases no parole date would ever be granted at all. Horror stories had thus spread far and wide about a regime of ultimate punishment, the damned souls trapped there suffering as they did in no other prison in the UK …
A sharp electronic buzz broke Norm from his reverie. He peered up the towering slab of rivetted steel that was HM Brancaster’s inner gate.
He huddled deeper into his anorak, not that it was offering great protection against the swirling gusts of rain, and glanced irritably at the heavy cloud cover as another zigzag of lightning split it end-to-end. To think that all the way north from Colchester he’d seen nothing but blue skies and summer sun. How quickly, as he’d neared his destination, all that had changed.
With a hefty clunk, a single-door section of the gate swung inward.
Norm stepped through into semi-darkness. Bare brick walls stood to either side; damp paving stones lay under his feet. He pulled back his hood and unzipped his anorak as two unsmiling officers emerged from a side office, checked him over with a portable metal detector and then subjected him to a vigorous body search. He’d already been advised not to bother bringing a notebook or pen, as both would be taken off him. Instead, he’d equipped himself with his Dictaphone, which, despite having told the authorities about it beforehand, the officers regarded with grave suspicion before handing it back without comment.
One of them withdrew into his office, while the other indicated that Norm should accompany him. They left the gatehouse, passing along a covered corridor, on top of which the rain thundered. Through its high letterbox windows, he saw the glare of moving spotlights.
‘This the way prisoners are brought in?’ Norm asked.
The officer, a tall, angular, lugubrious sort, seemed surprised to have been addressed.
‘They come in round the back, by secure transport,’ he said. ‘They only see this side of the prison if they’re being released. And that almost never happens.’
‘So, all this stark functionalism …’ Norm tried to sound as if he was being light-hearted. ‘That’s purely for the visitors?’
‘Visitors?’ The officer cracked a smile.
THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS …
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller, horror and sci-fi) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed (I’ll outline the plot first, and follow it with my opinions) … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.
ANTWERP
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller, horror and sci-fi) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed (I’ll outline the plot first, and follow it with my opinions) … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.
ANTWERP
by Nicholas Royle (2004)
Outline
Johnny Vos is an arthouse moviemaker from the US with a deep fascination for the works of Belgian expressionist painter, the late Paul Delvaux. Perhaps inevitably, he isn’t the sort who attracts big funding for his projects, but this doesn’t stop him travelling to Antwerp, where he intends to make a documentary that will be the last word on a mysterious artist whose specialism was the creation of urban dreamscapes populated by naked, somnambulant women.
Vos, who is the kind of filmmaker that we suspect makes plans as he goes along, intends to reconstruct some of these surreal tableaux on celluloid, but in order to find sufficient women who are prepared to pose naked in public, hires prostitutes and exotic dancers from the city’s red light areas. We’re in liberated Belgium, of course, so this doesn’t cause too much of a stir … until two of the women are brutally murdered in apparent ritualistic circumstances, their ravaged corpses left in situ with video tapes of films made by cult Belgian director Harry Kümel (who, like Delvaux, is actually a real person).
Enter Frank Warner, a British film writer who has appeared in other Nick Royle works. Warner arrives in Antwerp with his personable girlfriend, Siân, looking for an opportunity to interview Vos, but finds a country still overshadowed by the crimes of another real-life personality, maniac Marc Dutroux, and reeling from the revelation that a new serial killer is on the prowl. The police are actively on the case in the guise of Detectives Bertin and Dockx but seem less than capable, which implies that Belgian officialdom has not learned a great deal since the Dutroux scandal of the 1980s and 1990s.
Though we readers meet the killer relatively early in the book, we don’t learn his identity but join him as he roams the city’s districts of post-industrial dereliction, particularly around the port area, dementedly planning further atrocities while reminiscing on a childhood from Hell.
While all this is going on, the author dangles several potential suspects in our path.
Outline
Johnny Vos is an arthouse moviemaker from the US with a deep fascination for the works of Belgian expressionist painter, the late Paul Delvaux. Perhaps inevitably, he isn’t the sort who attracts big funding for his projects, but this doesn’t stop him travelling to Antwerp, where he intends to make a documentary that will be the last word on a mysterious artist whose specialism was the creation of urban dreamscapes populated by naked, somnambulant women.
Vos, who is the kind of filmmaker that we suspect makes plans as he goes along, intends to reconstruct some of these surreal tableaux on celluloid, but in order to find sufficient women who are prepared to pose naked in public, hires prostitutes and exotic dancers from the city’s red light areas. We’re in liberated Belgium, of course, so this doesn’t cause too much of a stir … until two of the women are brutally murdered in apparent ritualistic circumstances, their ravaged corpses left in situ with video tapes of films made by cult Belgian director Harry Kümel (who, like Delvaux, is actually a real person).
Enter Frank Warner, a British film writer who has appeared in other Nick Royle works. Warner arrives in Antwerp with his personable girlfriend, Siân, looking for an opportunity to interview Vos, but finds a country still overshadowed by the crimes of another real-life personality, maniac Marc Dutroux, and reeling from the revelation that a new serial killer is on the prowl. The police are actively on the case in the guise of Detectives Bertin and Dockx but seem less than capable, which implies that Belgian officialdom has not learned a great deal since the Dutroux scandal of the 1980s and 1990s.
Though we readers meet the killer relatively early in the book, we don’t learn his identity but join him as he roams the city’s districts of post-industrial dereliction, particularly around the port area, dementedly planning further atrocities while reminiscing on a childhood from Hell.
While all this is going on, the author dangles several potential suspects in our path.
Vos himself is an obvious one, especially as he makes himself scarce after the police instruct him to stay put, while Harry Kümel, who would have been about 64 when this book was written and still very active, also makes a couple of guest appearances – not exactly as a potential murderer, though his movies are clearly held in some kind of reverence by the miscreant, so he’s a person of interest. Much more suspicious is the amoral diamond merchant and pornographer, Wim De Blieck, whose so-called ‘Last House on the Left’, a backstreet webcam house, has provided several of the sex workers cast by Vos, not to mention the odious Jan Spitzner, a former freakshow exhibit himself, now turned provider of ugly oddities through his own gruesome website, and someone who seems to be particularly besotted with certain of the ‘Last House’ housemates.
Initially, of course, our central protagonist, Frank Warner, is mainly interested in the works of Johnny Vos, though he is intrigued by the seeming connection between the murders and the two filmmakers. However, it takes a turn for the much more personal when Siân, who never really wanted to join Warner on this trip because she regards Vos as a chauvinistic conman, suddenly goes missing.
Warner is left bereft in the foreign city (‘foreign’ in so many ways, he now learns), hampered by unknowable bureaucracy, while the woman he loves – he didn’t realise how much until now! – has quite possibly been abducted by a relentless and deranged killer …
Review
Nicholas Royle first came to my attention back in the early 1990s as the author of countless readable but challenging short stories. Readable because they were so smoothly and beautifully written. Challenging because they were of a strongly surrealist bent, and while they were nominally horror stories, tended to go much, much deeper than that. His tales were also richly textured in terms of time, place and atmosphere, for all of which reasons I’m completely unsurprised that the first novel of Royle’s that I’ve ever read, Antwerp, is so engrossing.
To start with, the novel is well named, because Antwerp itself is a character in this narrative, if not the character. While the majority of the ensemble cast pursue each other at breakneck pace through the intricacies of the murder-mystery plot, the overarching presence, even though not every part of the story is set there, is the totemic titular city, which Royle doesn’t just describe in methodical, street-by-street detail, giving us far more than even the average tour-guide would, he also assesses in terms of its history, its culture, its many social and political upheavals, ultimately viewing it as a microcosm of Belgium overall, a small but compact country, which through the eyes and mouths of the book’s characters, most of whom are native (even Vos is of Belgian descent!) seems to be confused not just about its past, but about its present, and which is divided in terms of language and politics, and constantly seeking to establish a recognisable identity.
These are the author’s views, of course, or at least are the impression he was given after what must have been numerous exhaustive trips to Antwerp, because he writes about it as effortlessly, affectionately and familiarly as the rest of us might write about our home towns.
The Paul Delvaux factor is another indication of Royle’s interest in Belgian culture, the avant-garde painter well-regarded in his homeland. But the pursuit of the elusive Delvaux spirit, by the author and several of the protagonists in Antwerp, also underlines another of the author’s fascinations: the Euro art scene, not least European cinema, which, in an eerie fusion with the erotic horror-fantasies of Delvaux, plays a prominent role throughout this haunting tale.
However, Royle doesn’t immerse us in these interests of his just for the sake of it.
Voyeurism is a key theme throughout, particularly the voyeurism of women by men. And not just in the Delvaux paintings, but in Frank Warner’s endless trampings around the red light quarters of Antwerp (and other towns), wherein sad, scantily-dressed prostitutes tap on the windows to attract his attention, in the existence of the Last House on the Left, whereby men all over the world can watch selected women go about daily routines, which includes undressing and going to the lavatory, and even in the revered films of Harry Kümel, such as 1971’s Daughters of Darkness, a decadent vampire thriller about the modern day depredations of lesbian blood-drinker, Elizabeth Bathory, and Malpertuis, in which a mad genius manipulates his nubile victims through a vast and torturous maze.
Rather nicely, though, and perhaps a tad mischievously, Royle throws us an alternative viewpoint in the persona of Siân, who is unimpressed by all this intellectualisation of what she considers to be nothing more than sordid mysoginy, and doesn’t hesitate to say it.
But Antwerp is not just about its subtext. It is also a serial murder story, and though few of us, even in fiction, are unlikely ever to encounter a killer who wraps his victims in video tape or buries them in rubble with the cassettes of art-horror classics, there is a distinct air of the grimly real about it all. The bleak corners of Antwerp, the derelict shipyards, the burned-out factories, the empty, labyrinthine shells of buildings where business and commerce once thrived (dead zone, Doel, for example, is marvellously realised as one of the last places on Earth!) are ghoulishly reminiscent, to my mind at least, of Northern England during the scourge of the Yorkshire Ripper, and make the perfect hunting ground and deposition site for an urban predator of the 21st century, particularly when his chosen prey, though they might briefly stimulate the male gaze, will never be anything more to most men than a disposable pleasure.
(To Royle’s immense credit, by the way, he ascribes names and faces to many of these poor victims, describing to a degree their torturous everyday experiences so that we at least feel something as life leads them to the lion’s den. In my view, too many serial killer stories lack any kind of compassion for the victims).
Yes, there’s a dark, stark and very scary aura around the murder case itself, the blundering local police juxtaposed with a phantom figure, who is never seen and only heard from whenever his victims are found. The desperation Frank feels as he searches for Siân is painful to experience. The hopelessness of his cause as he scours the wearisome cityscape, mostly just following his nose as a journalist, feels utterly dispiriting.
On top of all this, of course, and without going into too much detail for fear of providing spoilers, Royle shows his horror-writing chops by spicing the whole thing with several taut, nerve-wracking sequences, again relying heavily and successfully on strange and terrible derelict structures, creating an atmosphere of jeopardy and despair.
All round, Antwerp is an excellent and enthralling thriller, quite arty in some of its ambitions, but only in the best kind of way, and though never terrifying, exacting in terms of the stress its complex and chilling storyline puts you through. Strongly recommended for all those with an interest in the darker side of fiction (and the arts).
And now, as usual, on the off-chance that Antwerp gets a sniff of a film or TV deal, I’m going to be ill-advised enough to try and get my casting suggestions in first. Only a bit of fun, of course. Who would listen to me anyway?
Frank – Timothy Innes
Siân – Millie Brady
Johnny Vos – Matthew Lillard
Jan Spitzner – Carel Stuycken
Harry Kümel – Jeroen Krabbé
Wim De Bliek – Walter Baele
Initially, of course, our central protagonist, Frank Warner, is mainly interested in the works of Johnny Vos, though he is intrigued by the seeming connection between the murders and the two filmmakers. However, it takes a turn for the much more personal when Siân, who never really wanted to join Warner on this trip because she regards Vos as a chauvinistic conman, suddenly goes missing.
Warner is left bereft in the foreign city (‘foreign’ in so many ways, he now learns), hampered by unknowable bureaucracy, while the woman he loves – he didn’t realise how much until now! – has quite possibly been abducted by a relentless and deranged killer …
Review
Nicholas Royle first came to my attention back in the early 1990s as the author of countless readable but challenging short stories. Readable because they were so smoothly and beautifully written. Challenging because they were of a strongly surrealist bent, and while they were nominally horror stories, tended to go much, much deeper than that. His tales were also richly textured in terms of time, place and atmosphere, for all of which reasons I’m completely unsurprised that the first novel of Royle’s that I’ve ever read, Antwerp, is so engrossing.
To start with, the novel is well named, because Antwerp itself is a character in this narrative, if not the character. While the majority of the ensemble cast pursue each other at breakneck pace through the intricacies of the murder-mystery plot, the overarching presence, even though not every part of the story is set there, is the totemic titular city, which Royle doesn’t just describe in methodical, street-by-street detail, giving us far more than even the average tour-guide would, he also assesses in terms of its history, its culture, its many social and political upheavals, ultimately viewing it as a microcosm of Belgium overall, a small but compact country, which through the eyes and mouths of the book’s characters, most of whom are native (even Vos is of Belgian descent!) seems to be confused not just about its past, but about its present, and which is divided in terms of language and politics, and constantly seeking to establish a recognisable identity.
These are the author’s views, of course, or at least are the impression he was given after what must have been numerous exhaustive trips to Antwerp, because he writes about it as effortlessly, affectionately and familiarly as the rest of us might write about our home towns.
The Paul Delvaux factor is another indication of Royle’s interest in Belgian culture, the avant-garde painter well-regarded in his homeland. But the pursuit of the elusive Delvaux spirit, by the author and several of the protagonists in Antwerp, also underlines another of the author’s fascinations: the Euro art scene, not least European cinema, which, in an eerie fusion with the erotic horror-fantasies of Delvaux, plays a prominent role throughout this haunting tale.
However, Royle doesn’t immerse us in these interests of his just for the sake of it.
Voyeurism is a key theme throughout, particularly the voyeurism of women by men. And not just in the Delvaux paintings, but in Frank Warner’s endless trampings around the red light quarters of Antwerp (and other towns), wherein sad, scantily-dressed prostitutes tap on the windows to attract his attention, in the existence of the Last House on the Left, whereby men all over the world can watch selected women go about daily routines, which includes undressing and going to the lavatory, and even in the revered films of Harry Kümel, such as 1971’s Daughters of Darkness, a decadent vampire thriller about the modern day depredations of lesbian blood-drinker, Elizabeth Bathory, and Malpertuis, in which a mad genius manipulates his nubile victims through a vast and torturous maze.
Rather nicely, though, and perhaps a tad mischievously, Royle throws us an alternative viewpoint in the persona of Siân, who is unimpressed by all this intellectualisation of what she considers to be nothing more than sordid mysoginy, and doesn’t hesitate to say it.
But Antwerp is not just about its subtext. It is also a serial murder story, and though few of us, even in fiction, are unlikely ever to encounter a killer who wraps his victims in video tape or buries them in rubble with the cassettes of art-horror classics, there is a distinct air of the grimly real about it all. The bleak corners of Antwerp, the derelict shipyards, the burned-out factories, the empty, labyrinthine shells of buildings where business and commerce once thrived (dead zone, Doel, for example, is marvellously realised as one of the last places on Earth!) are ghoulishly reminiscent, to my mind at least, of Northern England during the scourge of the Yorkshire Ripper, and make the perfect hunting ground and deposition site for an urban predator of the 21st century, particularly when his chosen prey, though they might briefly stimulate the male gaze, will never be anything more to most men than a disposable pleasure.
(To Royle’s immense credit, by the way, he ascribes names and faces to many of these poor victims, describing to a degree their torturous everyday experiences so that we at least feel something as life leads them to the lion’s den. In my view, too many serial killer stories lack any kind of compassion for the victims).
Yes, there’s a dark, stark and very scary aura around the murder case itself, the blundering local police juxtaposed with a phantom figure, who is never seen and only heard from whenever his victims are found. The desperation Frank feels as he searches for Siân is painful to experience. The hopelessness of his cause as he scours the wearisome cityscape, mostly just following his nose as a journalist, feels utterly dispiriting.
On top of all this, of course, and without going into too much detail for fear of providing spoilers, Royle shows his horror-writing chops by spicing the whole thing with several taut, nerve-wracking sequences, again relying heavily and successfully on strange and terrible derelict structures, creating an atmosphere of jeopardy and despair.
All round, Antwerp is an excellent and enthralling thriller, quite arty in some of its ambitions, but only in the best kind of way, and though never terrifying, exacting in terms of the stress its complex and chilling storyline puts you through. Strongly recommended for all those with an interest in the darker side of fiction (and the arts).
And now, as usual, on the off-chance that Antwerp gets a sniff of a film or TV deal, I’m going to be ill-advised enough to try and get my casting suggestions in first. Only a bit of fun, of course. Who would listen to me anyway?
Frank – Timothy Innes
Siân – Millie Brady
Johnny Vos – Matthew Lillard
Jan Spitzner – Carel Stuycken
Harry Kümel – Jeroen Krabbé
Wim De Bliek – Walter Baele
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