Nemesis: Into the Shadows

‘I stirred in my sleep… Where was I? Why could I never remember anything but the dreams? Since when? I couldn’t remember.’ Thus the young male amnesiac – Ram, as he calls himself – on the opening page of this entertaining and quick-moving thriller. Set in contemporary Scotland, in a town apparently dominated by a variety of petty crime and criminals, the novel soon settles into an episodic and well paced example of the chase story, in which Ram is fleeing not merely from the murder he may (or may not) have witnessed but also from the considerable darkness in which his own past seems to have been shrouded. Along the way there is plenty of action and incident, involving a cast of colourful, if frequently unsavoury, characters. The compelling, gritty plot is driven largely by chance and coincidence and many young readers will be hooked by the ingenuity with which Ram is able to extricate himself from one testing predicament after another. And beneath all this – or perhaps central to it – is the suggestion (no doubt to be developed in the promised sequels) of the significance of Ram’s relationship with the father whom he has not seen for quite a time. With the suspense well maintained until the closing page this can be recommended as a highly enjoyable read.