Sixteen Horses

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A total of 118 people were arrested amid the chaotic scenes, with animal rights activists breaking onto the course and attempting to prevent the race taking place. There was some really well-written extracts too, such as the extract below, which is as equally transfixing as it is disgusting:

Evocative, intelligent and haunting, crime and thriller fans will love Sixteen Horses. For those who loved The Dry and Scrublands. The genre skews towards gothic, and readership skews 20+ Utterly brilliant. Poetry and cinema at once. If this isn’t one of the biggest titles of 2021 I’ll eat my hat.” - C.J. Cooke Greg Buchanan’s debut thriller Sixteen Horses is set in a small English seaside community, and follows the discovery of 16 severed horse heads on a remote farm, partially buried. The mystery soon unravels into much more than just murdered animals, drawing the reader in with secrets and a multi-layered crime. I also liked the characters in here too and I think that is one reason why I read this so fast. They are interesting. And many of them in here are depressed people (as the events going on are so disturbing) but they try to hang on and get through it. They don't just sit around and say "woe is me" but try to do things, work on the case or just survive (depending on the individual character). The characters also go through big character arcs, especially Detective Alec Nichols and Forensics Veterinary Cooper Allen. There is also a very isolated teenage girl named Rebecca who is friendless and controlled by her father. She is the one to find the dead horses. I did feel I could relate to her and how she would escape into fantasy worlds in games (reading books is basically the same thing you know)... cooper is just an forensics person who specializes in animal scenes so why does ada pressure her to solve the caseIn 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. There are so many characters being made to look guilty, and several of those opting for self-destruction—with a paragraph or several sentences about the investigation, that by the explanatory climax, it’s difficult to connect everything together. By that time, the reader will be so emotionally exhausted, the identities of the actual perpetrators seems inconsequential. I have trained racehorses and practised as a vet for many years, and my motivation for working in this sport – like everyone in the industry – is my deep respect for thoroughbred horses. I fully understand why there is a lot of anger directed towards the protesters today by my industry colleagues and lovers of the sport. The narrative was very fragmented and at times became hard to follow. It was quite a disjointed reading experience which made it less enjoyable. Although many of the characters weren't 'what they seemed' they weren't fleshed out enough for me to become invested in. cooper’s therapist is the biggest joke of all. What kind of therapist keeps interrupting her patient who’s talking about her trauma to ask her how she feels about it? Instead of letting her speak uninterrupted? The whole therapy is just a way for us the reader to finally get to know the crime. So dumb.

Alex Michaelides, author of The Silent Patient Original, beautifully written, terrifying and haunting. I won't forget this novel In the village of Ilmarsh, 16-year-old Rachel Cole discovers a gruesome sight while walking her dog in one of her family’s meadows. 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. Val McDermid describes it as deeply disconcerting. She is not wrong. From the start this is a traumatic tale. Disturbing in many ways. I normally read crime and horror fiction but I have never read anything like this before. Wow, it is traumatic from start to finish. halfway through I had to stop reading for 24 hours - it is rare for an author to do that to me. But I finished it, the twists and turns kept coming.It is rare that I plummet to the depths of a 2 star review but I struggled to engage with Sixteen Horses on multiple fronts.

The investigating officers and other personnel fall ill. Anthrax bacillus spores had been placed around the horses’ heads. One of those infected is Alex, who crashes his car in a delirium. His son Simon is with him but when the ambulance arrives, Simon is gone. The hook was clever and there were some smart twists along the way. However, the plot is incredibly disjointed. It jumps around, often rambling, but without real purpose or coming together at the end. Much of the prose is overwrought - this isn’t crime literature - this is poorly edited crime fiction. I also have little positive to say about the characters. There wasn’t one that made a real impression on me. The first photo Sophia ever took remains her most infamous: a missing girl who was never seen again. Forensic veterinarian Cooper Allen is drafted in for the post-mortem – and slowly becomes obsessed with the victim, her family, and the crimes she brought to light decades ago. The town of Iimarsh England is well described and you feel the hopelessness in the book; how everything is dying and people moving away and places just empty. The setting is perfect for the dark story. As a huge fan of Sixteen Horses I was eager to read Greg Buchanan's second novel, I was immersed immediately and throughout.Thrillers bevatten vaak lugubere elementen en Zestien paarden is hier geen uitzondering op. Het enige verschil is dat dit boek lijkt te zijn geschreven om de lezers te choqueren. Lugubere details en misselijkmakend dierenleed zijn orde van de dag. Het inblazen van een relatief nieuw beroep, de forensisch dierenarts, is een leuke zet, maar aan het eind van het boek blijkt Coopers rol onduidelijk. Helaas staat ze op dit front niet alleen en wordt ze gedurende het boek bijgestaan door meerdere karakters zonder duidelijk nut. En net als je denkt door te hebben hoe het in elkaar steekt, wordt er zo'n bizarre en ongeloofwaardige plottwist in gegooid, dat het spoor weer bijster is. De onduidelijkheid die het gehele boek treft zorgt voor een groot aandeel in de wirwar van het geheel. Het verhaal las voor mij heel verwarrend. De tijdsprongen en de wisselende perspectieven maken het er niet duidelijker op. De schrijver maakt geen woorden vuil aan mooie volzinnen en ingewikkeld taalgebruik. Ik ga ervan uit dat hij zijn lezers wil schokken. Or the film Se7en. Remember that? The atmosphere of that film. Every outdoor shot it was raining, every indoor shot lowly lit, that is this book. That same feeling. Greg studied English at the University of Cambridge and completed a PhD at King’s College London in identification and ethics. He is a graduate of UEA’s Creative Writing MA.