Book description
When a teenage couple are found murdered in their car, a boy called
Adam Sligo is the only suspect. The letter A is found blazoned on the
wall at the murder scene and is soon followed, around town, by the
other letters of the alphabet, each immaculately painted in red. What
do the letters mean? Is Sligo playing games with the police? Or
putting a spell on the town?
Perry Scholes is mixed up in all this from the start: a man haunted
by cars and death - and photographic images of both. He trawls the
motorways and edgelands listening to police radio, getting to the
car-crash or the crime scene before them. He makes a living selling
these shots to the papers. He is the one who spots the painted
letters, and begins to document their appearances.
As the town is paralysed by fear and paranoia, a vigilante cult
emerges, arming itself for the battle against evil. Perry finds
himself trapped in a nightmare. A killer is at large, and the
alphabetical messages he leaves seem to be personal messages for him.
Michael Symmons Roberts has published two novels and four collections
of poetry, including
Corpus
, which won the Whitbread Poetry Award. He is a frequent collaborator
with the composer James Macmillan, with whom he wrote
Edgelands
.
