The Long Second

by Marshall Buckley

"Absorbing, cleverly-written; can sit alongside the winners and the short-listeds and the well-known authors...it looks not a fraction out of place." Joanna Cannon, Best Selling author of "The Trouble With Goats and Sheep" "Possibly the best ending to a book I have ever read" Our Book Reviews Online Did you love Richard Curtis' "About Time" - then you'll love this! If you enjoyed the time-travel element of Stephen King's 11.22.63, then you may well enjoy this - in 11.22.63, time-travel is important, but the characters are more so - the same applies to The Long Second. (If you're worried that time-travel means hardcore Science-Fiction, King proves otherwise and The Long Second agrees!) Fraud, betrayal, drugs, love. Time-travel. That's a lot for Tony Cole to deal with. If you could travel back in time, you'd win the lottery, right? If only it were that easy. Even time-travel has to obey some rules, but as nobody seems to have written them down, Tony is going to have to work them out for himself. And he doesn't always get it right. On the surface of it, his family is perfect, but scratch away the glossy coating and you'll find a family on the edge of disaster. Tony can try to fix all this, but every time he plasters over one hole, he uncovers another. Faced with his brother's betrayal he has to decide whether his life is worth saving, but even one death can have far-reaching consequences. A thriller in the mould of Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas which will keep you guessing right to the last page.

604 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2011

About the author

Living in Herts, UK and Newfoundland, Canada, Marshall Buckley is married (twice) with 5 children, 4 dogs, 4 cats and (at the last count) 6 small fish. These numbers are likely to change at any time.

He works in the computer games industry and is also an IT specialist. But not for the computer games industry.

He writes (duh!), reads, plays games (duh again!) and tinkers with computers (you get the idea).

He can often be found on Twitter (@MarshallBuckley), occasionally talking about books, often helping out poor souls with tech issues (feel free to ask for help) but mostly doing neither just, you know, socialising. Wine is frequently mentioned as are pistachios.

Oh, and just in case you're at all confused, he's 2 people: Marshall and Buckley. It's Marshall that you'll find wasting time on Twitter...

Reviews

[Shared Machine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Believable characters, despite their slightly comic undertones. Story becomes progressively darker when main conceit is revealed. This doesn't happen until the middle of the novel, though, so it's a slow burn. Afterwards, things become more interesting and conflicts increase. Structurally, this story meanders like a stream of consciousness, which may or may not appeal, depending upon the reader's desire for narrative and thematic framing. It's enjoyable but somewhat aimless until the main turning point. This pushes the midpoint to the last third, which is unusual and then ends abruptly without a resolution. Will need to read second novel to see whether it all comes together. Intriguingly, we took a similar approach with ES, which ends on the midpoint, incidentally. However, we felt it had a strong enough narrative structure to warrant it. Now, it's up to the audience to decide! In any event, TLS is an interesting debut with a competent voice.