Scottish crime author Tariq Ashkanani goes super-dark with his latest crime novel – The Midnight King. This is a book that in America might come with a bunch of trigger warnings related to child abuse, suicide, paedophilia and serial killers. And yet, somehow, Ashkanani manages to thread the needle and deliver something that while no doubt dark and tragic is also fascinating and a little bit nuanced.
The Midnight King is the title of a manuscript by famous crime author Lucas Cole. Left after his apparent suicide, the manuscript partially fictionalises Cole’s life as a serial killer. He has stayed free all these years because someone else was found guilty of his string of 13 child abductions and murders. Cole’s son Nathan returns home after many years for the funeral and finds the manuscript in the old family home. But Nathan already knew what his father was doing, which was why he left. What worries Nathan is the recent disappearance of another girl in the area and the fact that it may well have been his father’s work. Also on the case of the missing girl is Nathan’s old friend Isaac, damaged and drummed out of the police, he is working as a local PI.
Ashakanani uses this set up to explore a range of issues. Nature versus nurture, how parents can influence their children (even while they are abusing them), dark fans. But he also has time to consider the man wrongly accused of the crime, a man with potential intellectual disabilities who has ended up on death row because the police needed a perpetrator.
The whole enterprise ramps up to an excruciatingly tense finale where some not unexpected revelations are made. While the twists become a little predictable, Ashkanani makes the most of the way they land. The only niggle with the whole setup for this is driven by the contrivance of one of a pair of detectives going on his own to follow up a lead with a suspect.
The Midnight King is pitch black crime fiction, even in the realms of books about serial killers. Ashkanani says in his Afterword that he was inspired by Thomas Harris, and by that time readers might have picked up on some of the similarities in his approach to this type of subject matter. Ashkanani does give his material heart, even if it feels like that heart has to be ripped out of someone’s chest first.
The Midnight King by Tariq Ashkanani
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