Wen Li, an anxious young woman who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, is tormented by an incessant fear that she might have homicidal impulses. Wen falls for her self-absorbed colleague, Lomax Clipper, who is writing a whodunnit in his spare time. Lomax is pining for Italy and a Sicilian woman he met while on secondment, despite his recurring nightmare about someone being killed on a picturesque street in Palermo. Wen and Lomax both loathe their boss, Julian Pickering, who, unbeknown to them, is struggling... as is Fifi de Angelis, a vulnerable man who has been ostracised by his family. Packed with humour, heartache and suspense, this contemporary take on the epistolary novel interweaves the different perspectives of characters whose lives become increasingly entangled.
An engrossing modern epistolary novel
I'll admit that I had expected more of a mystery or crime-thriller, based upon the title and blurb of Countdown To A Killing. It could perhaps be better described as literary / contemporary fiction, a building crescendo to a future crime that doesn't actually feature in the plot, beyond a brief explanatory epilogue. That said, Tom Vaughan MacAulay has produced an engrossing and amusing character-based tragi-comedy in 21st century epistolary novel format.
Via several intertwined series of email correspondence and WhatsApp messages, we come to know London-based scrivener-notaries Lomax Clipper and Wen Li, their boss Julian Pickering, and – later – Lomax’s Sicilian friend Fifi de Angelis.
While the majority of the action in the first half takes place in London, four of our protagonists ultimately converge on the Via Lungarini in Palermo on the night of 1-2 September. We know, thanks to several “editorial interventions” with which the epistolary narrative is punctuated, that someone will die and someone will kill, and that one, but not necessarily both, roles will be filled by the central characters. Who and why remains a mystery. The narrative turns up fraught relationships and potential motives aplenty, but ultimately the much-anticipated final denouement comes as a rather jarring, though not unsatisfying, close.
Tom Vaughan MacAulay successfully renders the well-established epistolary format for a 21st century audience - traditional letters are replaced with emails and WhatsApp messages, with the inevitable mishaps such as mistakenly copying in, tagging or forwarding to the wrong recipient. As we only see one side of each series of correspondence, it's left mostly to the reader to interpolate the content of the other side of the exchange. This enables MacAulay to skilfully convey the protagonists' biases, insecurities and flaws without having to lay them out in black and white. We can draw parallels with our own work and social lives, family and romantic relationships, internal dialogues, and with those who we encounter along the way. It's an immersive and engrossing reading experience.
I found Countdown To A Killing a rewarding and stimulating read, with fascinating, albeit not always particularly likeable, characters, an evocative setting and a cleverly-structured plot. I also enjoyed the sample of author Tom Vaughan MacAulay's previous novel, Being Simon Haines, that was included at the conclusion of my Kindle ARC.
Sarah, 29/07/2022
