Sixteen Horses is the debut literary thriller from an extraordinary talent, Greg Buchanan. For fans of Jane Harper’s The Dry. In a small English town, sixteen horses heads are found buried on a nearby farm. Local detective Alec is on the case, but they call in forensic vet (who even knew that was a thing?) Cooper to help out. Sixteen Horses is a powerful story encased in an even more powerful narration, in which love and cruelty rise, intermingle, and become the same, but by doing so, mostly overwhelms the essentials of the plot. If you're looking for a new take on the crime genre, this a great place to start. Be wary: dead animals lie in this direction. But if you can appreciate their place in the story, you should enjoy this as much as I did.

Everyone holds secrets in the secluded town of Ilmarsh — marriages are fraught, relationships are tested, and there’s a lot for local police detective Alec Nichols to uncover. The initial crime feels quite unique to the genre, and the story takes you on quite a journey as you work to figure out who killed the sixteen horses. Unlike anything else you’ll read this year, SIXTEEN HORSES is a deeply disconcerting ride. Irresistible.” His hunger outlives him. His teeming gut, his microbiome aflame with all the bacteria and symbiotic juices, they carry on. All that life within him continues consuming and breathing until it can breathe no more. He digests himself.'

The mystery element is what kept me reading and I managed to finish this one, despite the actual reveal and the motivations behind it being utterly unsatisfying and it left me shaking my head at it. Sandy Thomson, trainer of first-fence fatality Hill Sixteen, is adamant the 15-minute delay caused by protesters to the start of the 175th Randox Grand National at Aintree was the major contributory factor to the horse’s fall. Simultaneously captivating but at the same time, deeply disturbing, Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan gives a new meaning to the word ‘UNNERVING’. Authors, if you are a member of the Goodreads Author Program, you can edit information about your own books. Find out how in this guide.

Police detective Alec Nichols is called to the scene and is unprepared for the sight. In a short while, other officials join him, among them veterinary pathologist Cooper Allen. Since the modifications to the course in 2013 when the cores of the fences were softened, the pattern of the race has changed and the average number of fallers has dropped from 11.6 to five. The first fence, with no drop on it now, is no longer the bogey fence it once was. Seagulls swooped from roof to roof. Middle-aged couples sat on benches, mostly silent. The air smelt of dust, salt, skin, tobacco.”People thought fiction was the problem-that films, television, games, comics would all desensitize the world to violence and horror. Real things were far harder to care about.” Original, beautifully written, terrifying and haunting' - Sophie Hannah, author of Haven't They Grown