Zoo

Marks’ earlier novel How it Works, a lively account of an older teenager’s slip from the world of family and school and his engagement with a murky world of crime, was very clearly set in this country. Zoo has many similarities but the shift to the American west coast opens up a whole new style. This is fast-paced crime writing with Cam kidnapped after his car is rammed by a van in broad daylight and the detectives knowing that something ain’t right. Cam escapes but his sense that he has to keep running from kidnappers and family mimics the world of 24, using clock timings for chapters and the same ricocheting from danger to apparent safety to danger which makes for a breathless first sequence. The second section is more like The OC transfused with Elmore Leonard, and while Cam settles into a luxury Californian house, the mystery of the kidnap deepens when a young investigative reporter hacks into a computer to reveal further mysteries involving eugenics. There a good dose of action, there’s guns blazing, a beautiful girl, a spoilt rich kid and a dramatic climax. It may be formulaic in its borrowing but it works so well that it’s hard to turn the pages fast enough.