Pig Island

Hayder’s dark, inventive 2006 thriller begins as journalist Joe Oakes arrives on a secluded island off the western coast of Scotland to visit a reclusive cult on remote Pig Island. Joe is there to investigate a supposed half-animal, half-human creature distantly glimpsed in a tourist’s film, but his real interest is in the cult’s founder, Malachi Dove, who’s now living behind an impenetrable barricade topped by pig skulls. On the island, Joe, whose wife, Lexi, is unhappy and delusional, becomes infatuated with Malachi’s strange young daughter, Angeline. When cultists are murdered and Malachi goes missing, Joe and Lexi take Angeline to their London home, where trouble inevitably follows. Portions of the book are narrated by each of the three. For the well-born Lexi’s chapters, reader Crossley uses an upper-class British speech that shifts from sharp reality to almost lyrical fantasy. Angeline, a natural adapter, moves swiftly and easily from wild-child halting speech to the loquacious nattering of a normal raised teenager. But Crossley is at his performing best portraying rough-edged Joe as he stumbles through an assortment of intense emotions including fear, shock, helpless infatuation, self-disgust, jealousy, and, finally, despair. A Grove paperback. (Feb.)