Glen Duncan resurfaces as Saul Black with excellent The Killing Lessons

I had one of my more satisfying reading experiences of recent times last weekend when I picked up a crime novel.

UK author Glen Duncan

I had one of the more satisfying reading experiences of recent times last weekend when, having finished a lot of mandatory (though still enjoyable) reading for the Sydney Writers Festival, I picked up a crime novel from the bedside tower. The novel in question is The Killing Lessons by Saul Black, about whom the inserted press release from publisher Hachette has nothing to say. But I was attracted by the cover blurbs from giants of the genre: Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child and Linwood Barclay. Once I started the book I assumed, based on the setting, that Black was American.

Before going on I should warn this is a brutal, stomach-turning story. It starts as it intends to continue, with merciless murder, where not even children are spared. “The instant Rowena Cooper stepped out of her warm, cookie-scented kitchen and saw the two men standing in her back hallway, snow melting from the rims of her boots, she knew exactly what this was ...’’

Because this novel is not about who is doing the killing but why (and inherent in that, how to stop them), we don’t need a spoiler alert to say the two men are a serial killing duo responsible for the rape, torture and murder of at least seven women in the space of three years. Their trademark is to leave a seemingly incongruous item inside their victims: an apple, a ceramic goose. In charge of the investigation is San Francisco homicide detective Valerie Hart, and boy does she have some problems, not least of which is a fondness for Smirnoff.

I read this 400-page thriller in a sitting, propelled by the pace of the story, the psychological richness of the characters and the sheer need to know what would happen next. Yet as I read I was aware that the back of my mind was busy trying to work something out. The writing was so assured and the characters, even the killers, so deeply drawn, that I wondered if Black was some American creative writing class prodigy. The rear mind liked this idea for a while, noting that one of the significant characters is a famous novelist and ticking off the poetic references, such as to Auden’s The Novelist ( ... among the Just / Be just, among the Filthy filthy too’’). But it was more than that. There was something in the DNA of Black’s sentences that was familiar.

The light bulb ignited on page 230. I know this because I calmly marked the page and then startled the dogs by yelling: “It’s bloody Glen Duncan!” And with that it all came back to me: Duncan, the English literary novelist who wearied of writing books that critics loved but no one read, decided about five years ago to reinvent himself, first as a horror writer and now as a crime writer. The former incarnation produced three linked books, all of which sold well: The Last Werewolf, Talulla Rising and By Blood We Live (each published here by Text).

I knew his next project was a crime novel, but I’d plain forgotten this when I picked up The Killing Lessons. The satisfactionImentioned at the outset is threefold: first, The Killing Lessons is a great read, and I thought so when the author was Saul Black; second, it was reassuring, as someone who worries he doesn’t have time to read closely, to have a moment where the critical brain earned its keep; and third, I’m just pleased for Duncan, who I’ve met a few times and like a lot. The Killing Lessons is out now (Orion, 408pp, $29.99).

While I’m at it, another recent literary crime chiller (it’s set in Alaska) that I highly recommend is William Giraldi’s Hold the Dark. It starts as a story about wolves eating children, and becomes far, far worse. Bleak and brilliant.

Quote of the week: “Humanist Sex Rules: Bestseller waiting to be written. Go for it! Rule 1: Never shout ‘Oh God’ during the Act.’’ Salman Rushdie, on Twitter, bless him, at the tail end of a discussion about Ireland’s historic vote on same-sex marriage.