Customer Reviews

Blacklands

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am waiting impatiently for Belinda Bauer's next novel. It is hard to believe that "Black Lands" is her first. Her writing is on a par with experienced best-selling authors. Ms. Bauer's detailed description of the setting allows the reader to feel the dreariness and hopelessness of the main characters' lives. "The street was narrow and winding and, in summer, tourists smiled at the seaside-painted terraces with their doors opening right onto the pavement and their quaint shutters. But the rain made the yellow and pink and sky-blue houses a faint reminder of sunshine, and a refuge only for those too young, too old, or too poor to leave."

She allows us inside the minds of both the young boy and the criminal. One can actually feel what the characters are feeling. Ma. Bauer's vivid descriptions allowed me to travel to England in my mind and I heard the characters speaking with a British accent.

The setting and characters alone do not a novel make. The story line of "Black Lands" is very intriguing and kept me totally absorbed. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a good thriller and everything British. Even my non-Anglophile friends are lined up to borrow it.

On the barren, bracken moors of Exmoor, outside of the rural town of Shipcott, serial killer and pedophile Arnold Avery has disposed of children's bodies. He has been serving a life sentence for his heinous crimes, but the discovery of his victims' remains are not complete. One child, eleven year-old Billy Peters, has been missing for nineteen years; the location of his grave remains a mystery. Billy's mother still peers stonily out of the window of her house, as if waiting for him to return. Billy's sister, Lettie, suffers from the fallout of her mother's remoteness and lack off affection. Her life has been hollowed out since Billy's disappearance. Now with two young sons of her own, Lettie has been through handfuls of failed relationships with men. She behaves with a bitter resentment towards her oldest son, twelve year-old Steven. The future appears gloomy and doomed to the past.

This story is about Steven's attempt to heal his broken family. He is a precocious and sensitive boy with particularly astute critical thinking skills. Lonely and frequently bullied by the neighborhood kids, he has one friend, and even that alliance is not too promising. He ventures with his spade and his sense of purpose off to the moors to dig. He digs daily and ferociously, determined to find his uncle's grave and bury the past sorrows. He wants his Nan to stop waiting for the impossible and for his Mum to quit grieving. When no evidence turns up, he writes a letter to Avery in prison to ask where his uncle is buried. Avery admires the pluck of this painfully brief letter and writes a cryptic letter back, even though he doesn't know whom the missive is from--man, woman, or child. The tension of the story progresses with the letters, and a tender, taut tale unfolds with remarkable restraint and depth.

This is not your typical serial killer story. Gratuitous violence is supplanted by a quiet desperation, which is more effective in revealing the insidious horror and rippling ramifications of Avery's atrocities. The narrative is largely advanced through psychologically interior scenes and internal reflection, and the details are exhumed through Steven's crusade for redemption.

This pacing is unhurried. The action is gradual, and at times is too slow and plodding. Additionally, I thought that Steven's acuity of thought and cleverness a bit too sophisticated and believable for his age and experience. However, these were minor blemishes in an otherwise original and atmospheric story.

Lonely, nerdy Steven Lamb has one goal in life: finding his murdered Uncle Billy's remains. When random digging on a British moor turns up nothing, the pre-teen has a brainstorm. When Arnold Avery, England's worst serial killer since Ian Brady, receives cryptic letters from SL asking about his exploits, he rediscovers what it feels like to hold life and death in his hands. It isn't long before Longmoor prison is too small for this ambitious killer.

"Blacklands" is not a crime novel. Belinda Bauer's debut is a literary investigation into the minds of a crime-obsessed boy and the killer whose shadow lingers over a grieving family. Steven struggles to find who he is and to stand up for himself in cruel, poverty-ridden Southwest England. Avery wants to recapture the glory of his heady psychopathology, and no one but himself is real enough to matter.

This novel is intensely English. Casual references to Maltesers, Steven Gerrard, and Milk Tray had even this long-term Anglophile rushing to Google. Thus, getting through this book may require an effort from a more committedly American audience. But the investment of time and strength will be worth it when the boy's and the killer's shared monstrosities come to life in an explosion of literary weight.

Bauer's voices are uncanny. Her insights into the process by which an ordinary person becomes a killer are chilling. And her views on a family caught in the long shadow of violence can harrow the soul. She writes in an omniscient tone that writers haven't much used in the last forty years, so her storytelling can feel somewhat old-fashioned even when it's very contemporary. But the tension and the emotional mass never stop ascending until the brutal climax.

For literary fiction fans and crime devotees alike, this novel has the potential to take readers into a dark place and emerge cathartically purged. Bauer's debut is blood-curdlingly realistic while never losing an edge of ironic humor. And its all-too-human characters have the power of a punch in the gut. This is an author, and a novel, not to be missed.

Twelve year old Steven is the sort of boy who easily goes unnoticed, expect by those who want to taunt him. Living with his mother, his nan and his much younger brother he spends his spare time on Exmoor digging holes in the search for the remains of his Uncle Billy, abducted and murdered aged eleven. He hopes that finding the remains will end his nan's misery, still waiting for Billy to return after twenty years, and so restore his family's happiness.

Getting nowhere in his search, despite the occasional help from his best friend Lewis, he decides on the direct approach, and so launches into a correspondence with Billy's imprisoned murdered. A cryptic correspondence that will eventually lead to a potentially disastrous conclusion.

The characters are well drawn, one is drawn to Steven, a typical schoolboy; but Lewis, his rather selfish and sometimes jealous friend is obviously the leader. Nan, bitter, with a face that might crack if she smiled, Steven's mother who is really only happy on the rare occasions she has a man about the house, and the young Davey complete Steven's family.

Blacklands is a good story, at times gripping. However there is a lot here that seems is intended simply to drag out the drama, needless repetition of the characters' reasonings, and frequent diversions that have little bearing. To draw the narrative out further there is the inexplicable introduction late in the story of a the sixteen year old army private, we are presented with his short life history, yet he is of little if any consequence in the overall scheme. Steven's schoolboy tormentors, the three hoodies, crop up in the most unlikely places, stretching the limits of credulity. Steven most improbably appears to have just one schoolteacher (although this is clearly not so), embittered and heartless, she fails to take up his cause.

I enjoyed Blacklands, but was also irritated at times by its shortcomings, and often tempted to gloss over the less relevant passages. Despite this I found the conclusion positive and heart-warming.

Belinda Bauer's debut novel (more of a novella really) "Blacklands" is a surprising and original foray into a classic crime genre. On one level, "Blacklands" is a coming-of-age story of one boy's quest to reunite his fractured and psychologically damaged family. On another level, it is a cat-and-mouse game between a serial killer and someone who seeks the truth, at any cost, about his unexposed crimes. What Bauer does, quite unexpectedly, is to meld these story threads together to produce one of the more intriguing thrillers that I've read in quite some time.

The heart of "Blacklands" is twelve year old Steven Lamb. Steven's mother and Grandmother have led withdrawn and empty lives for 18 long years. The boy that Steven would never know as his uncle disappeared and was presumed dead years before Steven's birth, but he and his brother have lived under that shadow their entire lives. Steven embarks on a plan to resolve this pain of the unknown that has haunted his family. He starts digging around the local moors, where a known child killer had stashed his victims, hoping to happen upon the missing body. When this proves fruitless, Steven decides to contact the serial killer in jail to ask for help--and this starts a deadly game that must be seen through to the end.

Steven is a terrific and believably complex character, and Bauer's entire story rides on his shoulders. Never dumbing him down, we believe in this boy's resilience, perseverance, and intelligence. When the child and the killer enter a battle of wills, they are on equal footing. This is not a kid's book, by any means. Steven, despite his age, lives firmly in an adult world and I found this to be refreshing and honest. I was totally captivated by this odd little novel of psychological suspense. I suspect "Blacklands" is a tale that will stick with me for quite a while! 4 1/2 stars

I was riveted by this book, which I listened to in CD form. The brilliant reading of it by John Curless added a whole other dimension to my experience. Read other five star reviews to know more. I love books which are not only fascinating and well done, but which leave me with a deeper understanding of human beings. Great portrait of the soulful and tormented little boy, and of the twisted mind of the pedophile. Belinda Bauer not only has something meaningful to say, but the gift for writing the most beautiful and fluid prose.

In this stand-alone mystery, Steven Lamb, an unhappy twelve-year-old boy living in a small town in Somerset, UK, spends his spare time digging up the nearby moors. He's hoping to find the body of his uncle Billy, whom he's never met because Billy disappeared 19 years previously when he was just eleven. Presumed to be the victim of a notorious serial killer/pedophile, Billy is sill mourned by his mother and sister--Steven's gran and mother, with whom he lives a miserable existence, Billy's disappearance coloring everything in their lives a dull gray. He thinks that finding Billy's body will give the adults in his life a sense of closure and allow them to actually get on with being a normal family.

Arnold Avery, stuck away in Longmoor prison, has never admitted to Billy's abduction and killing as he has six of the others, so Steven, who's been doing a lot of reading about serial killers, undertakes to write him and simply ask--but must play a cat-and-mouse game to get his letters through the censors who read the letters to and from prisoners. Avery, who has spent years making nice so he can hope for some sort of parole, has his interest piqued by the letters written by "S.L" and is glad for something to occupy his thoughts and time.

As events begin spiraling out of Steven's control, the ending seems to be a bit inevitable, but leaves you sitting on the edge of your proverbial seat just the same. Told from the point of view of both Steven and Arnold Avery, this is not a book for the squeamish or faint of heart. But it's very well done, and excellently read, too. I hope to read more by this author in the future!

"Digging had given his life purpose. It was a small, feeble purpose and was unlikely to end in anything more than a gradual tapering off into nothingness. But purpose was something, wasn't it?" - Blacklands

Twelve-year-old Steven Lamb of Somerset, England lives his young life with more purpose than most ever experience in an entire lifetime. His father long since out of the picture, his mother stuck in a dead end housekeeping job and his Nan (grandmother) still haunted by the disappearance of her son, Billy, eighteen years earlier, Steven and his five-year-old brother exist in a house perpetually filled with tension and despair.

Billy, who was the same age at the time he went missing as Steven is now, is presumed to have been killed by pedophile and serial killer Arnold Avery. Convicted of killing six children, though he never admitted to Billy's abduction or murder, Avery is serving a life sentence in a nearby prison.

That Billy disappeared at such a young age was tragic enough, but Steven is convinced what has cast such a dark cloud over his family is that Billy's body was never found. His Nan in particular seems unable to move on, holding a daily vigil at the window as if still expecting Billy to come home even after eighteen years. Steven believes that if he could just find Billy's body he would be able to heal his family's psychological wounds. After all: "If Nan loved him and Davey, maybe she and Mum would be nicer to each other; and if Nan and Mum were nicer to each other, they would all be happier, and be a normal family, and... well... just everything would be... better."

Determined to find Billy's body and bring it home to rest so that he can have a normal family, Steven spends all of his free time digging boy-sized holes in the moor where Avery's known victims were found, to no avail. Frustrated by his lack of results, he finally has an epiphany: go straight to the source. And so Steven writes a letter to Avery that sets into motion a life-altering chain of events.

Though the cryptic exchanges between Steven and Avery are reminiscent of the Clarice Starling / Hannibal Lecter relationship in Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs, through her use of a child protagonist Bauer has crafted a fresh twist on the serial killer crime genre. She has, in fact, managed to seamlessly weave together a psychological suspense novel and a traditional coming-of-age story.

At only 220 pages Blacklands is a quick read, though given the compelling storyline it could have been twice as long and I still don't think I'd have been able to put it down without finishing in one sitting. Absolutely heartbreaking in his earnestness, painfully realistic in the missteps that he makes, and inspiring in the depth of his determination, Steven Lamb is one of the most fully realized characters I've come across in quite some time. That he is merely a child makes what Bauer has accomplished with Blacklands, a debut offering no less, all the more impressive.

I can see how many readers might view this book as creepy, or disturbing, even too so to read. For those of you who enjoy gut wrenching flinches and scrunched up faces when reading about a serial killer, you will enjoy this novel.

Steven Lamb's family is a mess, literally. His uncle Billy was murdered as a child, but the remains were never found. This is almost worse then finding the body, scratch that, definitely worse. In the young boy's mind all of his family's problems begin and will end with Billy's body. In pure child logic he begins scouring the moor where he believes the body is being held. This isn't enough and courageously, though admittedly stupidly, he begins a correspondence with the alleged serial killer Arnold.

We all know that killers, especially serial killers are not sane; they toy and manipulate people and their feelings. Steven isn't aware of this as he begins his quest of pleading to find his uncle. Wow Bauer is truly an amazing author. I was creeped out and ticked off most of the novel (which is always an indication of an edgy piece of work). This is like Dark Places, or The Weight of Silence. We all can see most of the picture, but the poor characters only see what's in front of them, then the author goes and twists it to the point where the readers aren't even sure what might happen in the end.

Blacklands by Belinda Bauer


Steven Lamb is twelve years old and spends
his days with a rusty old spade digging to find the remains of his Uncle Billy. After a bout of frustration and doubt, he decides to enlist the help of a serial killer convicted of killing several children in the area.
This incredibly believable novel is extremely engaging. Bauer's character of the child predator is unsettling in the sense that I could not stop thinking how real her portrayal of his thoughts, scheming and his way of life played out.
It was as if she were in his head typing out his exact thoughts.
Arnold Avery, the pedophile serial killer is callous and calculating and deeply disturbed. Steven Lamb is a gentle, caring young boy and all his wants is to heal his family. Is he any match for the serial killer that killed his uncle?
This was an adrenaline pumping read, especially toward the end, it really had me hooked from start to finish- a one sitting read! I definitely plan on reading Belinda Bauer's next novel.
I highly recommend this novel.