re:mote voices

Title: The Cutting Crew
Author: Steve Mosby
Publisher: Orion

Martin has stopped going to work. Martin has left his wife. Martin has started drinking. Martin was a police officer. But a dead girl changed everything.

The city seems to have a life of it's own some times, claustrophobic and corrupt. Martin and his partners tried to fight back - where rapists and murders would walk free, they would pay them a visit. But with this dead girl there was no one to visit, and it wasn't long before Sean disappeared, and Martin's affair with Lucy ended badly.

Just as Martin is preparing to hit bottom a note arrives from Sean. He has found out who the dead girl was. This opens everything back up again, and it isn't long before Martin realises that the hole he has dug himself goes much deeper than he previously thought.

The Cutting Crew is the second novel by Steve Mosby, his first The Third Person being included in Orion's New Blood series. A series of crime novels by first time crime writers. Like The Third Person, The Cutting Crew is ostensibly a crime novel, and is most likely to be found under crime in your local book shop. Though, also like The Third Person, there is something "other" about The Cutting Crew.

The Third Person was set in a city which suggested there was something different about it. That idea is more central to The Cutting Crew, introducing us to a nameless place, split into 16 sections, each named after an animal. With each section, Mosby offers clear ideas of what they represent - Horse is the student area, Wasp is entertainment, Bull is industrial, Snake is where the graveyards are.

Each trip into one of those areas comes with a snapshot of mood and sense - Horse is full of strangers, who push up property prices, drink too much, and cross the border into Wasp; Wasp is where the pubs and clubs are, but its also the red light district, and the further in you go the darker it gets; Bull is run down, decrepit and past it's prime, the kind of place where you find a young woman's body. This is a more conscious and deliberate gambit than in his previous novel, and it is pretty effective - so much so that, the reference to a Spanish neighbour becomes a little off putting because it brings you back to a real world.

The Cutting Crew in some ways isn't as dark as The Third Person. Introducing our lead character as a gun man in a clock tower. Making him gradually darker and less justifiable. Rather than presenting with a man that appears thoroughly evil as a hero from the outset. Though the two leads certainly have something in common - two men who have stopped going to their jobs, and have been deeply affected by the disappearance of a woman. The social commentary that was present in The Third Person is still present in some form, though perhaps more subtle this time. On the other hand The Cutting Crew has its own darkness, becoming more supernatural to a degree - as villains seems to come out of the darkness, invisible till it is too late.

The Cutting Crew is a strong follow up to The Third Person, continuing to establish Steve Mosby as a writer to watch, filling the void left by Michael Marshall Smith's shift to more mainstream crime writing. Here is looking forward to The Damage Door, Mosby's promised third novel.