Book Review: “The Last Voice You Hear” by Mick Herron

The Last Voice You Hear by Mick Herron

This was a sequel to Down Cemetery Road, originally published in 2003, reprinted in the US following the success of the Slow Horses.  The story picks up Zoë (Not Zoe) Boehm’s life after the traumatic earlier events.  We also learn a little about what happened to Sarah.

This story is grim and Noir, with enough contemporary references to be even more unpleasant.  The combination of sexual predation, racist violence, police misconduct, and media trashing is not fun to read, even with out the tense violence and personal danger.

In the Noir tradition, Zoë is the last honest woman in town, and immediately rushes to the defense of the weak (even if they aren’t always innocent).  This is a good way to get killed. 

Frankly, the “mystery” isn’t all that hard to solve.  The reader figures it out, and so does Zoë.  The main question is, what should and can be done about it?  Any sensible person would try to run away as fast as possible, but that’s not the Noir way, is it?

As in other very early works, Herron’s style here is hard to read.  He relentlessly builds and releases tension, over and over.  It’s exhausting.  His later works are way more readable (as well as funnier).

In this story Herron shows us that Checkov’s rule about guns also applies to large birds:  if you show the reader an ostrich in Chapter 5, it’s going to get loose in Chapter 7.

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1. Mick Herron, The Last Voice You Hear, New York, Soho, 2015.

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