EQUINOX - Michael White

Michael White is the author of a considerable number of non-fiction books, including one entitled Isaac Newton:  The Last Sorcerer and you'd have to assume that book feeds a lot of the fictional story of EQUINOX.  Mind you, EQUINOX doesn't read like a non-fiction / biography style book - it's a thriller with a slightly bizarre, but really effective, main story thread.

 

In current day Oxford as the bodies of young women are found with different organs removed and an ancient style of coin left in the body cavity, a visiting New York journalist and the father of her Oxford student daughter become involved in running their own parallel investigation of the deaths.  Daughter Jo's father, Philip Bainbridge is a photographer who supports his more artistic aims by working as a police crime scene investigator and he's originally very unsure about Laura's interference in the crime investigation because of the possible embarrassment and complication it could cause in his job, but as connections between the crimes and incidents in Oxford in the 1600's are revealed the whole family increasingly becomes involved.

 

Interlaced with the current day story there is a tale of The Royal Society in the 1600's.  The society includes Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley and Christopher Wren, and alchemy is the link between the current and the past.

 

Okay, so it's possibly not that difficult to work out who the villains are in EQUINOX, but the revealing of the reasons behind the murders  and the pace of the investigation doesn't let up so you're carried into the story, becoming infinitely more concerned about the why's and wherefores than the who's.  The intertwining of the past and present really works, the revelations of the activities of the Royal Society are actually pretty weird and creepy and that gives what is obviously going on in the current day a really disconcerting feel to it.  At the end of the book there is a list of reference materials used to flesh out some of the elements of the book, it's a bit surprising to find out what is based on fact and what isn't.

 

But really what works so very well in EQUINOX is the quality and style of the writing.  EQUINOX whips along at lightening speed and carries the reader through to a climax that has a couple of really nice twists, despite what seems to be a pretty unlikely plot at the end of the day.    Movie anyone?