Light Shining in the Forest by Paul Torday.

                   Light Shining in the Forest by Paul Torday. Book Review.

"Why did you give him to me, if you were going to take him away again?"


The debate continues here on stigmata and divine intervention versus atheism and agnosticism. Torday stated that the atheists and agnostics might be wrong and that there might be a God. If this makes your blood run cold then perhaps you'll relish the opportunity to be immersed in a story that fuses the genres of thriller, satire, horror and the supernatural as well as love and sex. Forget the religion.

Recently in Madrid a number of young children have been abducted from Ciudad Lineal, one from the Dominican Republic, another Japanese and a Chinese girl as well as some Spanish girls. Torday responded to the Baby  P case in the UK by writing this novel in an attempt to highlight the inadequacies of the Social Services and the breakdown of the family unit. Who's to blame? This is his most disturbing and angry work, published the year of his death. "Pure evil has a random quality that it is difficult to predict and arm yourself against."

The story is set in Torday's home territory-Northumberland. We are plunged into the primeval world of fables in the Kielder forest with animals possessing human-like eyes, mysteriously appearing and disappearing, uncomfortable periods of silence. Its inhabitants lived by violence, men who were masterless who acknowledged no King as their ruler. It's a dark, haunting bleak landscape hiding macabre thoughts and acts of barbarity. It's also where Geordie Nixon works as a woodsman.

His relationship with Mary has floundered after the abduction of Theo, a special child who displayed mysterious lacerations and wounds that appeared and disappeared without any logical explanation. "Abusing and losing children is something the nation excels at."

Norman Stokoe is the Children's Czar, a glorified civil servant who receives an extensive salary for sitting in an office doing nothing because of a political shake up. When confronted by the mother of missing Theo he is repulsed at the thought of getting involved. A brazen reporter, ambitious, waiting for the killer-story that will consolidate his future as an investigative reporter shakes up Norman's sanctity. Willie Craig. Two more children, this time girls, are abducted and the police seem lethargic. Norman Stokoe has a change of heart and wants to get to the truth of the matter. Are the police hiding something? Is there a cover up? Why is he threatened? Who is the child abductor? Read it at your peril….

"If this was the second coming of Christ, it would be a bit rough, wouldn't it? First time he turns up he gets crucified, the second time he's murdered by an overdose of diamorphine."

 "The truth is we don't know how many children go missing, which is an appalling state of affairs. But the best estimate we have shows that every five minutes a child goes missing in the U.K. It is really quite shocking."
Catherine Meyer, Founder of the children's charity "Parents and Abducted Children."

 Vultures by Chinua Achebe.

 ...Praise bounteous
providence if you will
that grants even an ogre
a tiny glow-worm
tenderness encapsulated
in icy caverns of a cruel
heart or else despair
for in the very germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.


Publisher: Orion Books. ISBN: 978-1-7802-2224-0

 Copyright 2014. Permission must be obtained from the author before any of this article review is reproduced.

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