You just dropped off your child at the bus stop.
A panicked stranger calls your phone.
Your child has been kidnapped.
The stranger then explains that their child has also been kidnapped, by a completely different stranger.
The only way to get your child back is to kidnap another child - within 24 hours.
Your child will be released only when the next victim's parents kidnap yet another child.
And most importantly, the stranger explains, if you don't kidnap a child, or if the next parents don't kidnap a child, your child will be murdered.
You are now part of The Chain.
The Chain, Adrian McKinty
Rachel Klein is going about her day when a phone call she receives sends her straight into the pits of parental hell.
Rachel’s daughter Kylie has been kidnapped and there is more than just a money ransom that needs to be paid in order for Kylie to be returned safely to her. Rachel is ordered to kidnap and ransom a child herself, thereafter, becoming part of THE CHAIN.
THE CHAIN could have been a lot more of a techno thriller than it was but it has enough prods directed at the reader about the dangers of social media and the nasty dark interweb etc that we are duly reminded of the ridiculousness of the way some now choose to live their entire lives out online. In full view of everyone they know, and many that they do not, to their peril.
The small cast of characters keeps your concern to a tight circle as Rachel, her brother-in-law and her daughter Kylie incrementally begin to either disintegrate or adapt to the new pressures. Rachel Klein is multitasking like a single mother in THE CHAIN and you have to tip your hat to the high level of stress and complexity that she is being forced to function at. Enduring cancer, her only child being taken, having to TAKE a child herself, fending off the evil masterminds, a new job etc. Much to do, much to do. All parents have to up their game and turn into superheroes when their children are under threat, and Rachel in this novel kicks it up more notches than we can count. Would we be able to do the same if we were Rachel? That is the big take home question from this read.
THE CHAIN serves very well for what it is mean to be – a fast paced thriller novel that you can easily see being snapped up for the big or small screen soon enough. It’ll hold down the corner of your beach towel just nicely, or perhaps keep you engaged and gripped for the entirety of your flight. Park your scepticism at the door as there’s plenty of moments where your head will start tipping to the left but it’s all good. You are here to be entertained, not educated. THE CHAIN dishes it up loud and large and does not disappoint.
Did you think this was going to a bush crime novel when you first clapped your eyes on the gorgeous cover of THE CHAIN? That, THE CHAIN certainly is not. THE CHAIN instead delivers a solid chase read where the ante is upped and lowered, people do some seriously dumb things, and people do some very brave things also. If kids getting hurt is one of your reading taboos, fear not, it doesn’t go too far down that road in this textbook ‘everywoman’ thriller. Everything you think is going to happen, does, and (most) everything you want to see get resolved and tied up in a box, eventually happens also.
Irish author Adrian McKinty is a two-time winner of The Ned Kelly Award for crime writing. He now lives in New York and remains a reviewer and critic for the The Sydney Morning Herald, the Irish Times, and The Guardian.
Update… Paramount Pictures has recently acquired the film rights for THE CHAIN.
The Chain, Adrian McKinty
Consider for a moment what you would do. You've dropped your child off at the bus stop on their way to school, and you're heading towards a normal day. You've had some health challenges yourself recently, but you're getting your life back together. You're going back to work. Your life is taking a turn for the better. Until you answer the phone and a panicked voice tells you, they have kidnapped your child, and then they explain the nightmare scenario that you need to get onto straight away if you ever want to see your child again. It's a choreographed scenario, it's stylised, it feels like they've done this before, but it's not until you're well into the steps to get your child back that you realise it has most definitely been done before. There are people out there who have kidnapped other children to get their own child back, and some of them are nearby. You're being watched. You can't go to the cops, you can't turn to your ex for help. You've got no money, you're not a kidnapper for goodness sake, and you're tied to a chain that's got you locked into it for life.
If you've been living under a rock, or outside the crime fiction chat bubble, you may not be aware that THE CHAIN has been talked up in every corner, by every reader, and in just about every circle - as the film rights were sold to Paramount for a seven-figure sum. Needless to say, the buzz has been pretty deafening. Somewhere in the middle of that, it's worth nothing a quote from McKinty (taken from a story by the Guardian):
“On the surface I was winning all these awards, getting great reviews and getting praised. On the other hand it was completely fake. I wasn’t providing any income for the family. They were selling two or three thousand copies a year. You can’t really live on that. So my poor wife was working full-time and I was living this life of the artist.”
He's talking about a time not so long ago, when at the seeming height of his popularity in Australia in particular, McKinty was thinking about giving up writing. It took an intervention from agent Shane Salerno, spurred on by fellow crime writer Don Winslow to enable McKinty to keep writing, and the thought that his incredible storytelling skill could have been lost to us all fills me with sadness and my shopping cart with an order for copies of his entire back catalogue.
Let's hope this time round the great reviews, the positive buzz, the acclaim are actually going to translate into something ongoing because behind this novel is one of the all time great authors. Right from his debut novel DEAD I MAY WELL BE, McKinty has telegraphed a sublime story telling skill that's brutal yet nuanced, detailed yet open to interpretation, populated by some outstanding characters.
According to the Author Notes with the book, the idea behind THE CHAIN came to McKinty in Mexico City in 2012, when he heard about the concept of exchange kidnapping, when a family member offers themselves as a replacement hostage for a more vulnerable kidnap victim. Tying that idea to poisonous chain letters doing the rounds in the 1970's McKinty has come up with an unusual idea - a chain of kidnappings where the parents of a victim not only have to pay for their child's return, but must in turn kidnap another child to continue the "chain". Past participants in this chain of events are then often called upon to convince current participants to co-operate. People are closely tracked, their actions noted, commented on, they are threatened, and everyone, regardless of background, beliefs or circumstances, once they are on the chain, can't get off.
THE CHAIN never becomes bogged down in the technical details of how this surveillance is undertaken, nor does it become overly gory or the children under explicit threat (if you're a reader who is turned off by explicit violence towards children then you're okay to proceed with this novel), but it does have pace in spades, it has panic, it makes no bones about the threat that the parents feel, nor the discomfort occasioned by their need to pass on the terror. And the way that it eventually resolves itself is a good, old-fashioned opportunity to do some serious cheering for a brave person. The perpetrators in this story are there, they are explored a little bit, but to be honest by the end of it all, it's not about them, or their chain, or the past but all about the future, and just how far you would go if somebody you loved was threatened and just how narky people can get when the threat looks like it might never go away.
Please buy THE CHAIN (I got a review copy, so I bought copies as presents and a whole lot of people can probably guess what they are getting for Christmas now). While you're at it, buy all of Adrian McKinty's books as I've just done. There isn't a dud in the bunch, and you will not regret it.