MAN DOWN by Roger Smith

Roger Smith is known for his brutal, grim, violent crime novels and Man Down might be one of his most nihilistic and that’s saying a lot. This suspenseful thriller uses a home invasion story as its basis, but it expands in surprising ways until you get a stronger sense of what sins of the past have influenced the attacks on John Turner, his wife Tanya, and his daughter Lucy, South Africans who emigrated to the U.S. and found some success. 

The first thing that struck me was how “off” Smith’s writing felt compared to his other work. It came off to me as a bit wordy, with constant run-on sentences that felt a little lofty and pretentious, very different from my experience with other novels by Smith. I was also a little turned off by the non-linear structure, which normally I don’t have a problem with, but it felt like it distracted from the story and there was no rhyme or reason when certain storylines and timelines were paired. 

But ultimately, the story did click for me halfway through. Smith really brought it home by the end and I was actually pretty satisfied. There are hardly any redeeming characters (even John our protagonist was pretty reprehensible), but I was riveted for the last half of the book once it all started coming together. 

He felt a moment of powerful vertigo, a curious lurching, like an elevator coming suddenly uncoupled from his winding drum, and, despite clenching his fist, jaw, and asshole, the feeling persisted, as if something so deep within his being that he had become aware of it only by its absence had broken its tether and was now lost to him forever.

GRADE: B-