On the cover of my copy of The Farm is a blurb from Mark Billingham that reads “You will not read a better thriller this year.” I don’t know who Mark Billingham is, but I now know he’s a damned liar. This is the only so-called thriller I’ve read for the entire year, being my attempt to break out of my comfort zone, and I can tell you, there’s nothing remotely thrilling in this. It’s barely interesting and fails as a mystery as well. It’s dreadfully tedious, and the only reason I kept reading was because of morbid curiosity to see when, if ever, the book might pick up the pace and become an actual thriller. That never happened.

Fair warning: I’m going to spoil the ending for this book, so if you plan on reading it anyway, avert thine eyes and scroll or click away before it’s too late.

So, the blurb certainly made this book sound interesting, as did the first fifty pages, in which the main character Daniel is called first by his father, who says his mother is mentally ill and had to be hospitalized. His mother soon calls to say she is not insane and has been released from the hospital. She then flies from Sweden to Britain to lay out her story for her son and explain how she’s come to suspect that everyone in her town is part of a huge conspiracy. What conspiracy? She won’t say until after laying out all her evidence. Continue reading