Down River [Hardcover]

Stephen Gallagher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1989

This horror story by the author of "Valley of Lights" and "Oktober" features a corrupt policeman who is involved in a crash following a car chase and is presumed drowned. But he isn't - he is out there and seeking revenge.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An English detective has lost his mind and is plunging into madness as this engrossing and fast-reading thriller unfolds. Knowing that Johnny Mays's "methods" violate English law as well police policies, partner and boyhood friend Nick Frazier tries to bring him in line. But Mays is adamant that he is England's "avenging angel," and he keeps filling his "book" with names of society's "enemies." His paranoid delusions spur him to a vicious car chase that Frazier tries to stop, but his efforts just get him listed in the "book"; Mays apparently dies in a crash. Having been saved by an unsuspecting samaritan, however, Mays embarks on a mission of vengeance that leaves no doubt that he is alive. Frazier searches for him "down river," back where they grew up, and amid vividly hewn scenes of a coastal village, tries to rein in his far-gone pal and save a woman who had once played a part in each of their lives. The denouement, thanks to Gallagher's ( Oktober ) strong writing and excellent characterizations, is unforgettable.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Trafalgar Square; First Edition edition (March 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0450491293
• ISBN-13: 978-0450491290
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,579,282 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Novelist, screenwriter and director, born in Salford, Lancashire and specialising in contemporary suspense.

STEPHEN GALLAGHER was described by The Independent as "the finest British writer of bestselling popular fiction since le Carré ... Gallagher, like le Carré, is a novelist whose themes seem to reflect something of the essence of our times, and a novelist whose skill lies in embedding those themes in accessible plots." According to Arena magazine, "Gallagher has quietly become Britain's finest popular novelist, working a dark seam between horror and the psychological thriller."

The Daily Telegraph wrote, "Since Valley of Lights, he has been refining his own brand of psycho-thriller, with a discomforting knack of charting mental disintegration and a razor-sharp sense of place." Charles de Lint wrote in Mystery Scene magazine, "Gallagher is a master of abnormal psychology and he just gets better and better." Also in Mystery Scene David Mathew added, "never a writer to rest on his laurels, he has written good hard thrillers, some horror genre work (such as Valley of Lights), and a novel (Oktober) that might even qualify as a vague distortion of contemporary world fantasy... in places. You might go as far as to employ that overused phrase sui generis. He is, at any rate, one of the best writers of his generation."

Winner of British Fantasy and International Horror Guild awards, Stephen Gallagher's screen work began with Doctor Who and includes miniseries adaptations of his novels Chimera and Oktober, which he also directed. He created and wrote for both the British and American versions of Eleventh Hour, which starred Patrick Stewart in the UK and Rufus Sewell in Jerry Bruckheimer's CBS remake. His most recent novel is The Kingdom of Bones and his next will be The Suicide Hour, both from Random House.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars down river, January 4, 2012

By 

Mr. G. Antonelli - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Down River (Kindle Edition)

Stephen Gallagher has always been a favourite of mine. His easy prose style never gets heavy or boring. His dialogue is realistic. But what I like best is his 'heroes' are always ordinary people in extraordinary situations. You really feel for them as they face their trials.
Down river is no different.
The police character of Jennifer appears in a later book, nightmare with angel. The only instance of this in his fiction.
I also love how he evokes the sense of place, especially some of the seedy, desolate places his characters journey to (both in geography and in the mind).
With lots of twists, some obvious, some not at all, it is a pacy satisfying read.
Another winner.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Put This Book Back Down, You'll Just Want to Chuck it in the River! Don't Waste Your Money, Way Better Gallagher Books Out There, March 13, 2010

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Down River (Paperback)

Stephen Gallagher is a very good, although not very well known author. It's extremely hard to come across his books and expensive to obtain them when you do. You're usually rewarded for you time and money with a great read. Unfortunately this is not so with Down River, which has characters you really couldn't care less about, a lot of padding out the pages with boringness when a few short well written (the usual Gallagher way) chapters would have told readers the exact same developments in each section of the plot. The novel starts of well with a flashback chapter of a young version of the main character Nick Frazier blocking a rural isolated road with his bike and convincing a travelling salesman to accompany him to a dead body and insisting the adult tells the police and everyone else that he is the one who found it. Then we come to the present and Nick is nothing like that great interesting child character.

Basic plot Nick Frazier is transferred to a new police jurisdiction as he couldn't handle the attitude of his former colleagues towards him after he did the right thing in his mind and reported a bit of police brutality towards a particularly reprehensible criminal that ended up winning that criminal compensation. In his new Nick , Nick has found romance with a uniformed officer (he's a plainclothed officer) and been partnered up with his old childhood friend Johnny Mays (which is another flaw in this book as it uses the American partner situation which isn't how the British police operate). Johnny makes what his former officers did look like nothing, and he does it all the time, even keeping a little black book where he writes down details on anyone that annoys him so he can get even later. Nick faces the dilemma of if he should report him, ignore it or confront his childhood friend and lay down the law with a good lecture. When a particularly nasty out of control child decides to defecate on the front seat of Nick's car and they set out to get even Johnny assumes Nick finally gets it. Unfortunately Nick's morals kick in and he demands Johnny backs off. A furious Johnny tells Nick he's now on his list too just before their pursuit car has an accident and flies off the wall of the dam. Johnny is presumed dead but his body is never found. As Nick falls apart emotionally he decides to go back to his childhood town and deliver Johnny's possessions to his family and try and figure out learn what happened to Johnny in the time since their childhood that made him the vengeance seeker he became.