A Lonely Man by Chris Power Review

A writer struggling with his second book happens across a ghostwriter of celebrity autobiographies - with quite the story to tell. Hired to write the autobio of an exiled Russian oligarch - one of Putin’s many enemies - the oligarch has been found dead of an apparent suicide. But the ghostwriter is convinced that Putin is behind the death and that his assassins are hunting down all associates of the oligarch - and he’s next.

Chris Power’s debut novel A Lonely Man starts promisingly and has an intriguing premise but he doesn’t do enough to develop it into something more engaging. As a result my interest began to dip after the first act and kept going down until I was relieved to finish the book.

Power sets up the premise well and I enjoyed the initial meetings between Robert and Patrick. Robert’s a frustrated novelist, Patrick’s a man on the run - all well and good. But beyond learning about Patrick’s involvement with Russian politics, nothing further happens. What was the point of seeing Patrick get the job of ghostwriter when he already told us that’s what he was hired to do? It added nothing. Robert goes to a friend’s funeral, he goes to his Swedish holiday home to write, he contemplates an affair for no reason, there’s some suggestion of harassment from Russian goons - it’s precious little substance to make up nearly all of a novel.

I think Power was trying to create some ambiguity about whether or not Patrick was telling the truth or was making it up but I was never convinced he was a fantasist, which only made the ending all the more anticlimactic and flat. Also, Power attempted some feeble pontificating about the ethics of a writer writing about other people’s lives for their own gain which was neither clever or thoughtful.

The passages about the writing process itself were sorta interesting, the book is easy to read and is mostly well-written, and I liked the early scenes of the novel. But for a literary thriller it’s not very tense at all and painfully insubstantial. Also, Power has nothing new to say about the Putin regime that most people won’t already know/suspect (let alone those like me who’ve read entire books on the subject like Ben Mezrich’s Once Upon a Time in Russia) so it’s an extra-forgettable narrative!

It starts well but Chris Power unfortunately failed to realise any of the premise’s potential. A Lonely Man is an increasingly tedious and underwhelming literary thriller that leaves no impression behind whatsoever.