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A review by paulabrandon
All Fall Down by Tom Bale
2.0
Rob and Wendy Turner are a middle aged couple with adult twin sons and an adopted teenage daughter. An idyllic backyard barbecue is interrupted by the arrival of a seriously wounded man, and this sets their life off in an unforeseen, dangerous direction.
What could be considered mild spoilers follows.
All Fall Down feels like a hodge-podge of various genres. It starts out as what seems like domestic noir, with not only Rob and Wendy hiding secrets, but also daughter Georgia and son Josh. Then, with the inclusion of characters such as Jason Dennehy and Johnny Nyman, it begins to resemble gangster-lite nonsense. (I'm emphatically NOT a fan of gangster material. I have no idea why there's so much of that element in the books I read. I don't find it interesting at all.) There's a bit of mystery as to who might be setting the family up. And then halfway through, it changes into a home invasion thriller, with some very mild torture porn thrown in.
Due to the constant tonal shifts, it took me some time to get into the book. The first half was, frankly, a bit dull. The home invasion portion is reasonably interesting and tense, but still feels like it's holding back. The material is very tame compared to, say, what Karin Slaughter or Richard Laymon might do with it. Also, the home invasion portion is rife with cliches, and ultimately doesn't deliver anything you haven't seen done elsewhere better. There's an underwhelming cap-off, ending things pretty much as you expected it to.
The characters are fine. I liked the protagonists and disliked the antagonists. There were a couple of interesting and intense moments. But the book definitely felt like it had an identity crisis, flitting between so many different crime sub-genres. And despite trying to have a finger in all those different pies, couldn't really deliver anything to make it stand out from the pack. I suspect the publishers didn't quite know what to do with the material, considering the strange title and a plot description that pushes the domestic noir angle.
What could be considered mild spoilers follows.
All Fall Down feels like a hodge-podge of various genres. It starts out as what seems like domestic noir, with not only Rob and Wendy hiding secrets, but also daughter Georgia and son Josh. Then, with the inclusion of characters such as Jason Dennehy and Johnny Nyman, it begins to resemble gangster-lite nonsense. (I'm emphatically NOT a fan of gangster material. I have no idea why there's so much of that element in the books I read. I don't find it interesting at all.) There's a bit of mystery as to who might be setting the family up. And then halfway through, it changes into a home invasion thriller, with some very mild torture porn thrown in.
Due to the constant tonal shifts, it took me some time to get into the book. The first half was, frankly, a bit dull. The home invasion portion is reasonably interesting and tense, but still feels like it's holding back. The material is very tame compared to, say, what Karin Slaughter or Richard Laymon might do with it. Also, the home invasion portion is rife with cliches, and ultimately doesn't deliver anything you haven't seen done elsewhere better. There's an underwhelming cap-off, ending things pretty much as you expected it to.
The characters are fine. I liked the protagonists and disliked the antagonists. There were a couple of interesting and intense moments. But the book definitely felt like it had an identity crisis, flitting between so many different crime sub-genres. And despite trying to have a finger in all those different pies, couldn't really deliver anything to make it stand out from the pack. I suspect the publishers didn't quite know what to do with the material, considering the strange title and a plot description that pushes the domestic noir angle.