Challenging; harrowing; satisfying

The Company of Fellows by Dan Holloway
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It begins so quietly, this novel. So unostentatiously. Granted, there are two corpses in Chapter 1 – it is a murder mystery, after all – but there is little, at first, to indicate that The Company of Fellows is anything other than just another detective story set in Oxford, following in the well-worn footprints of Morse.

The writing is a good deal better than Colin Dexter’s, which is to be expected. But in other respects the early chapters came as a surprise. For Dan Holloway is a tireless and selfless champion of alternative, edgy, indie writing (some of it, it must be said, a long way removed from his own literary calibre). Yet here he seems to be embarking on something more mainstream – an honest to goodness murder mystery, a thumping good read which manages to remain thought-provoking, told with flair, panache and insight.

It isn’t that simple, of course.