Adrian McKinty, The Chain

- This novel has been enthusiastically endorsed by top crime writers all over the world - huge names like Stephen King, Don Winslow, Mark Billingham, Dennis Lehane - and other notable reviewers.

- But the book is fundamentally flawed. It's based on a ludicrous and unbelievable premise that all parents whose child has been kidnapped will kidnap and potentially kill other people’s children to save their own. This is absurd. They go to the police, even if the life of their child is threatened. End of fucking story.

- We’re being asked to be fully and unconditionally sympathetic to these killers and potential killers, although their utter contempt for ordinary morality defies belief. It’s a perversity. 

- I've always been a great fan of Adrian McKinty's Belfast-based Sean Duffy thrillers. They are superb. But The Chain, a stand alone and set in the US, is just bad. As a society we’ve moved a long way from the ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ moral code. 

- The behaviour celebrated in this book runs completely counter to how real human beings are naturally driven to act in extreme circumstances. As the main character is asked by her rescued daughter: ‘How could you kidnap someone, mom? How could you do that?’ ‘I don’t know. I had to’ she replies. Total bullshit.