This is the first new novel from Richard Ford in six years and having enjoyed his earlier work I was keen to read this one when it landed in store.

The novel is told from the point of view of Dell Parsons who, when the novel opens, is about to start at the Great Falls High School where he is interested in joining the chess club and doing science projects on bee-keeping. Dell's father, Bev, is ex-US Air Force and emerges as a peripatetic schemer whose shady deals deliver his family into a state of financial duress and physical threat. Along with Dell's mother, the bookish and sensitive Neeva, Bev seeks a way out of his difficult situation by rather inexpertly robbing a bank. Of course both Bev and Neeva are arrested and Dell's life swerves into a dramatic new course when he is taken to Canada to live under the protection of Arther Remlinger - a man with his own reasons to stay north of the US border.

Richard Ford is a wonderful writer who develops his plot and characters meticulously, detail upon detail, rendering the landscape, the smell of a room and the look of a person with purposeful intensity. At the outset of the book we know there has been a robbery and a murder and the thrill of staying with this story is the slow unravelling of the circumstances around both these events. Reading this book I was reminded of the films of David Lynch - beautifully paced, intense and shocking. Highly recommended for those who love to marvel at the power of words in the hands of a great storyteller.