Review: Sixteen Horses

Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you can get past the cruelty to animals, this is a cracker of a thriller.

In a small English town, sixteen horses heads are found buried on a nearby farm. Local detective Alec is on the case, but they call in forensic vet (who even knew that was a thing?) Cooper to help out.

Now, if you don't anticipate animal cruelty from that blurb, you're a little naïve. We're starting with decapitated horses right off the bat and we want to know what happened to them. So if you're a bit squeamish, maybe give this one a miss. I WILL say that I am not a huge fan of animal cruelty myself but I found it bearable here. It mostly made sense within the story and it wasn't ever dwelled on in a particularly gruesome manner, so to me it made a point of difference in a world of same/same crime.

Alec is not a particularly good detective, so I was more and more fascinated to see his side of the story play out. Cooper is the big-hearted vet with an eye for crime so she was much more switched on. That being said, there never seemed to be a huge amount of progress made in the case. A lot of the secrets just came out all at once at the end.

This being a 'literary' crime, I found the writing quite refreshing. I'm not usually one to enjoy flouncy writing but it really worked for me in this one. At times I was frustrated to not be getting any answers, but there was also enough between the lines for me to work with.

I feel like there were quite a few things not quite tied up properly, which was a bit disappointing, and I wish there were more explanations about why things were necessary to the story. But for the most part I really enjoyed this novel and found it to be a quick read. The style was quite different for a crime/thriller novel so I found that aspect of it quite refreshing.

If you're looking for a new take on the crime genre, this a great place to start. Be wary: dead animals lie in this direction. But if you can appreciate their place in the story, you should enjoy this as much as I did.

With thanks to Macmillan for a copy

View all my reviews