Dark Covenant, by Peter Luther July 12, 2008
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Reviews , trackbackI wandered into Camden Waterstone’s one Saturday morning to find Peter Luther sitting on his own behind large pile of books. He’s a chatty, friendly bloke, and the book looked interesting so I bought it and it’s been sitting on my pile ever since. Tonight, suffering from Dr Who deprivation, I picked it up again.
Dark Covenant is a good all-in-one-sitting read, a thriller with a hint of the supernatural, exploring the idea of temptation and what ordinary people might be driven to do in extreme circumstances. Lewis Coin is a respected but average lawyer building up to a serious mid-life crisis when he finds himself given some extraordinary opportunities. No hero, he drifts along with the luck he’s offered in much the same way as he has clearly led his life to date and is dragged into a murky world which slowly gets stranger and stranger. There’s something very believable about the way the situation fails to bring out anything much more in him.
What is more difficult to believe is that, as a lawyer, neither he nor his partners put any effort into investigating the unusual new client who lands on their doorstep and turns their failing firm into a clear success. In this day of money-laundering regulations and security paranoia, it seems unlikely that even the greediest lawyer would not at least check a client a little more thoroughly than this lot do.
Although there are religious overtones, and a supernatural explanation for events is given, there are no holy grails or grand cathedrals here. In fact, Coin’s attempts at technological explanations sound more unlikely than the one finally given.
This would be a good book for the beach, or a quiet summer afternoon in the park.
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