I was at the Write Around The Murray festival in Albury at the weekend, talking about my book The Sun Is God. TSIG if you'll recall is about a 1906 murder inquiry amongst a group of German naturists led by a charismatic man called August Engelhardt. It's set in the Pacific island of Kabakon and it's more or less a true story. The events at the Murray Festival all take place in the Albury library, which, by an odd coincidence is just off Englehardt Street....
Also this weekend I got a review of TSIG in the Guardian. After a grumpy review in the Irish Independent (which basically said that everyone was waiting for a new Sean Duffy novel and that I had let down my readers by producing this wacky standalone) I got good reviews in the Irish Times and The Times. This review in the Saturday Guardian (below) was by the great John O'Connell:
Best known for his Sean Duffy novels, Adrian McKinty has permitted himself a stand-alone indulgence in The Sun Is God (Serpent's Tail, £11.99), an effortlessly entertaining historical thriller based on the true-but-scarcely-credible story of the Sonnenorden (Order of the Sun) – a sect founded on the South Pacific island of Kabakon by the German health reformer August Engelhardt, who believed that enlightenment could be achieved through naked sun worship and a diet of coconuts and heroin. It is 1906, and McKinty's hero, former military policeman Will Prior – a dead ringer, attitudinally, for Duffy – is helping the German police investigate the death of one of Engelhardt's followers, who was found with water in his lungs when he was supposed to have died of malaria. Prior travels to Kabakon and dwells among the emaciated, mosquito-bitten tribe. The mystery is overshadowed at times by McKinty's understandable urge to bring news of the broader lunacies of Sonnenorden life (you can't waste this sort of material.) But it all comes good in the beautifully structured final act.Many thanks too to those of you who have taken the time to leave me a review on Amazon and Good Reads, the reviews there are looking pretty respectable now thanks to nice readers counteracting the grumpy readers and/or the trolls.
