LoveReading Says
January 2018 Debut of the Month
A whole series of impressive endorsements leads one to believe this to be a highly suspenseful thriller when actually it is a well-written, character led drama, an excellent “set up” for a new American detective series. Our hero, Detective Ben Wade, ex of LAPD Homicide, has moved to quieter territory in the hope of saving his marriage. He fails, it hurts. From a damaged youth he now hunts those more damaged than himself, assisted by a woman also with secrets in her past. There is a strangler on the loose but it is a paedophile who dominates most of our detective’s attention. The dual plot, laced with lots of family drama and police procedure, meshes nicely together in a slow build. A fascinating tale. ~ Sarah Broadhurst
Reviewed by Sarah BroadhurstSarah Broadhurst spent her early working life in the book trade in both retail and wholesale until the arrival of children forced her to look for freelance work she could do from…
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Alan Drew Press Reviews
Wonderfully imagined and wonderfully written, patient but propulsive, serious but suspenseful, grown-up but gripping, Shadow Man is everything a great thriller should be. * Lee Child *
Shadow Man is smart, chilling, and impossible to put down, an accomplished thriller by a writer to watch. Alan Drew is a rising star, blending suspense and humanity with consummate style. -- William Landay * Author of Defending Jacob *
Shadow Man revises the old detective story and turns it in several fascinating directions. Alan Drew writes with precision, subtlety, and a streak of suspense that does not often color the literary novel. * Colum McCann *
Part murder mystery, part family drama, Alan Drew's Shadow Man has everything I like in a novel: grit, heart, and nail-biting suspense. It's the sort of magically absorbing novel that keeps you turning the pages and checking the locks on the door. -- Lauren Grodstein * author of A Friend of the Family *
Excellent, atmospheric . . . [a] superb police procedural . . . [Ben Wade] is but one of many sharply etched characters who help make Shadow Man a stellar achievement, a book that unspools like a dark-toned movie in the reader's mind. * The Wall Street Journal *
In Alan Drew's electric new novel, Southern California in the 1980s is so palpable it is almost a character of its own, lucid and relevant. His main character, Detective Ben Wade, is an outsize but knowable force, up there with Marlowe and Jake Gittes. Shadow Man is an enrapturing read from its start to its unpredictable, enthralling finish. -- Daniel Torday * Author of The Last Flight of Poxl West *
Always thrilling and often terrifying, Shadow Man is a descendent of Chandler's The Big Sleep. Underlying the grisly dangers of Drew's novel is the forceful honesty of all good California noir, the necessary and clear-eyed exploration of the innate human truths that should and do scare us. * Claire Vaye Watkins *
About Alan Drew
Alan Drew is the author of Shadow Man, a literary thriller. His critically acclaimed debut novel, Gardens of Water, has been translated into ten languages and published in nearly two-dozen countries. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was awarded a Teaching/Writing Fellowship. An Associate Professor of English at Villanova University where he directs the creative writing program, he lives near Philadelphia with his wife and two children. Learn more about his books at www.alan-drew.com.
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