The Chain
Reviewed By Janet Mawdesley July 11, 2019
Author Adrian McKinty
Distributor: Hachette Australia
ISBN: 9780733642517
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Release Date: July 2019
Website: https://www.hachette.com.au
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Adrian McKinty is at the top of his genre with his riveting, if not slightly terrifying crime thriller The Chain, based on and around the horrific Chain Mail kidnappings in the late 1970’s; an era when chain letters where prolific, poisonous and terrifying.
Rachels day on Plum Island begins just like any other normal day; dropping her daughter Kylie off at the bus stop. She has an appointment with her oncologist in relation to a series of tests done to assess the breast cancer she was treated for, was still in remission. She is worried but feels sure there will not be bad news waiting for her; she is looking forward to commencing her new job after Thanksgiving and all is well with her world, or at least as well as is possible.
She sends a text to Kylie, but when she gets no answer is not at all that worried. When her phone rings with an unknown caller, he asks her to pull over onto the side of the road, then tells her he has kidnaped her daughter and that she is now in The Chain, she is not to call in the Cops and she is to tell no one what has happened, otherwise Kylie will die.
A list of demands and instructions follows, but she is assured that so long as she does everything she is told, Kylie will be released and his own child will be set free. She must not break the chain or children will die!
From that moment on her nightmare is just beginning, a nightmare which will push her to the very limits of her endurance, will find her a new love and as she eventually begins to push back, maybe she will be the one to be able to break the horror that is The Chain.
Written in two parts, the storyline is very clean, based in fact, written with a deep understanding of the human psyche, and just how far a parent will go to save their beloved children. Rachel is forced to become someone even she does not recognise, a woman who will stop at nothing to rescue her daughter, not once, but twice, from the Monsters who have refined The Chain to their advantage; that of satisfying their love of money and a love of killing.
Adrian McKinty is well known for his Michael Forsythe trilogy, as well as the popular Sean Duffy series and six stand-alone books. With The Chain he has come of age, creating a story in which it is all too easy to accept that depravity can lie within each of us, particularly when the circumstances conspire to push humanity to the very edge.
Once begun, the sheer emotion of the storyline refuses to be put to one side, so be prepared to have plenty of time to at least get to the end of Part One, before turning out the lights.