The Destroyers
by Christopher Bollen
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Pub Date Jul 27 2017 | Archive Date May 07 2017
Simon and Schuster UK Fiction | Simon and Schuster
Description
When Charlie and I were young, we played a game called Destroyers . . . We were sharpening our instincts, jettisoning attachments. We were honing strategies for survival ...
Ian Bledsoe is on the run, broke and humiliated, fleeing the emotional and financial fallout of his father's death. His childhood friend Charlie – rich, exuberant and basking in life on the Greek island of Patmos – is his last hope.
At first, Patmos is like a dream – sun-soaked days on Charlie’s yacht and the reappearance of a girlfriend from Ian’s past – and Charlie readily offers the lifeline he desperately needs. But, like Charlie himself, this beautiful island conceals a darkness beneath. When he vanishes leaving behind his murky business affairs, Ian finds himself caught in a terrifying labyrinth of deceits. As boys, the pair played a game called Destroyers – a game, he now realizes, they may never have stopped playing.
Expansive, vivid and suspenseful, in the vein of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, The Destroyers is a mesmerizing drama of power and fate, fathers and sons, self-invention and self-deception.
Advance Praise
'The Destroyers is a smart, sophisticated literary thriller; for all its originality, it invokes the shades of Lawrence Durrell and Graham Greene' (Jay McInerney, author of Bright, Precious Days)
'Equal parts Graham Greene, Patricia Highsmith and F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Destroyers is at once lyrical and suspenseful, thoughtful and riveting' (Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You)
'Superb, a tightly woven and fast-moving narrative set in beautifully crafted prose. A read-all-night book' (Alan Furst, author of The Foreign Correspondent)
'Possessed of cold-blooded electricity and a beguiling elegance ... A propulsive, hypnotic portrait of rot at paradise’s heart and of the sprawling, inescapable tendrils of class and avarice' (Sophie McManus, author of The Unfortunates)
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781471136184 |
| PRICE | |
Featured Reviews
Siobhan D, Reviewer
The Destroyers is a tense and ominous novel about childhood friendship and about the lengths people go to protect their power and assets. Ian Bledsoe flees the death of his disliked father to the Greek island retreat of his old schoolfriend, Charlie, whose life seems untroubled by worry or money troubles, the opposite of Ian’s own. The situation on Patmos is far from idyllic, however, with social tensions and shady dealings that start coming out of the woodwork just as Ian thinks he might have found a refuge. This literary thriller becomes a complicated web of priorities as Ian tries to work out just what is going on which Charlie.
Bollen’s writing style is full of witty observations and the narrative becomes gripping as the strands really start to take off, all held together from the perspective of Ian. He is a classic friend figure, a fellow rich schoolfriend of Charlie’s who is now saddled with a lack of inheritance and an inferiority complex about life. The importance of Ian and Charlie’s childhood game Destroyers adds a vivid touch, a thread of danger running from the start until the imagined threat starts to appear real. The novel shows the modern world as a place divided and tense, with the refugee crisis, the collapse of the Greek economy, and the thread of extremist violence all forming the backdrop of the story. At times this seems a little irrelevant - Ian’s time in Panama is shown in perhaps too much detail - but what Bollen creates is a thriller about privilege and power that focuses more on characters and on the society that made them who they are.
Comparisons to Tartt’s The Goldfinch are easily made, though Ian does not feel similar to her protagonist and Bollen’s style isn’t as distinctive. However, the tense world evoked - one in which modern threats recreate old problems - is similar and the complicated formation of Ian and Charlie’s now-rekindled friendship feels similar to her work. The Destroyers is for anyone looking for a modern novel that looks deep at self-interest and self-presentation amongst a privileged world whilst also keeping up a tense, thriller narrative.
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