The premise of this sounded super good but I just did not connect with this. I wish I had loved it as most books I've read from Unbound I've loved but this wasn't for me.

East of England is a dark, noir story of revenge, set in Lincolnshire. The plot is great, shocking and violent at times, and the characters complex and realistic, especially the smart, perceptive and methodical Dan Matlock, the protagonist of the story, who has just been released from a prison in Lincoln. The physical traits and appearances of the characters become an important part of the character development, in a way they help determine the type of the characters. And it was particularly interesting to follow the emotional resilience and development of the main character, how he is transcending pain and grief by letting his anger unfold and moving towards a goal. Dan Matlock is not a nice guy, but he is certainly interesting.

The physical setting, the narrow area of Lincolnshire that is bisected by the A16, the decaying market towns and the run-down resorts in the coast, is equally important in the development of the story and it is described so realistically by Eamonn Griffin that becomes part of the story. You can feel, hear and smell the sea, the cattle market; it really influences the way you react in the story.

I am looking forward to the sequel.

This is so much not the sort of book I usually enjoy reading. Violence and brutality are not subjects I want to hear too much about. But I am so glad I took a chance on this one from NetGalley, as it’s a superbly written, gritty, chilling and compelling story that drew me in and kept me absorbed in the life of Dan Matlock, the protagonist. We meet him as he leaves prison after two years incarceration for murder. But in no way has he paid his debt, and how the revenge waiting for him on the outside plays out comprises the plot of this expertly-paced and atmospheric thriller. In the circles Matlock moves in scores have to be settled, and compassion is in short supply. Matlock isn’t a nice man, but there is humanity there somewhere and that stops the reader becoming totally alienated by him. Descriptions are vivid and I could picture every scene as it unfolded. The staccato writing style perfectly matches the edgy tone of the book and not a word is wasted. A very impressive piece of writing indeed.

Great read. The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in.

Alerted to the presence of this book via social media, the synopsis instantly grabbed me, and with the plus point of being set in a part of the UK that I am not aware of having read about before, this looked to be a sure-fire winner. I was not wrong, and I was completely delighted by this gritty tale of rural noir…

Set in and around the open flatlands of Lincolnshire, East of England, is a sparely written, but no less compelling account of one man’s thirst for revenge and atonement after a lengthy prison spell for manslaughter. I found that the sparsity of the prose mirrored the anodyne nature of the landscape perfectly, and to a certain degree the smallness and petty criminalities of the people’s lives that Griffin so effectively describes here. This is a small, claustrophobic world, that has moved on little since Matlock’s incarceration, and as he revisits traces of his past there is an overwhelming feeling of how slowly time has passed both inside and outside the prison walls, and how easily Matlock can track down those who have wronged him.

Speaking of which, I loved the way that in describing individual’s physical qualities, Griffin pares them back with a sharp simplicity often highlighting their less attractive features with a rapier wit. Everyone has a certain unattractiveness about them in either appearance or demeanour, but cleverly Griffin manipulates these to keep us fascinated by this collection of nutters, criminals and general oddballs. Matlock himself is a wonderfully mercurial figure, subject to sudden and lethal outbursts of violence and ill-humour, but also demonstrating a more empathetic and charitable side to his character sharply at odds with his bad-boy demeanour. I thought he was an incredibly appealing and unpredictable character, hell-bent on revenge, but quick-thinking and resourceful at every stage, but I was aware of an emotional distance between us and him that I found intriguing. This put me very much in mind of the work of say Ted Lewis (Get Carter) and as Matlock traverses this grim and unrelenting landscape I was sharply reminded of the immortal opening to that seminal film.

I thought this was an accomplished and very enjoyable debut- gritty, tense, violent yet punctuated with moments of pathos and wit at odds with the depressing landscape, and the cast of really quite unlikeable characters. I am keen to see what Griffin produces next, as I would highly recommend this one.

If Lee Child and Daniel Woodrell went to Lincolnshire together to write a novel, it might look a lot like Eamonn Griffin's <i>East of England</i>. This is a gritty thriller, a fast-paced noir set in the flat agricultural areas and amusement arcade-covered beach towns of eastern Lincolnshire.

Dan Matlock walks out of the prison, where he has spent the past two years for accidentally killing a man with his car, and across the road to the adjacent hospital carpark where he steals a car to drive home. He wants to see his father, but first he has a plan he needs to set into motion. Two years has given him a lot of time to think about what happened and to stew in his need for revenge. But even a well-laid plan will not hold out in the light of day and it's not long before Dan is just trying to figure out what is going on.

A lot happens in this novel, much of it violent, but Dan is not entirely on his own. There's his old employer, Big Chris, for whom he used to help collecting money from people who don't keep up with their payments and there's the old guy he meets in the caravan park where he is renting a place to live. There's the receptionist at the nursing home and, in an odd way, the head of the crime family that sent him to prison. This is a novel where criminals face off against slightly worse criminals, where the seaside attractions are showing their age and the family farms have given way to giant factory farms. Lincolnshire comes to life as Dan goes about his business, but often the plot is interrupted by sections that regurgitated from road maps and guides to local attractions. Overall, though, this is a solid novel and I look forward to seeing what Dan Matlock gets up to next.

by Eamonn Griffin


(I received an ARC of this book from Unbound/Unbound Digital through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Please accept my apology for finishing this book so late.)


(TW: violence. LOTS of violence.)


East of England is one of those novels where you root for the main character, but you're not quite sure why. Dan Matlock is fresh out of a two week stay in prison. He immediately steals a car. Instead of deciding to travel to the west and escape from the situation that put him in jail, he heads east into the thick of everything. Instead of laying low, he immediately starts causing trouble.


I found the plot pretty fascinating. The violence in the book probably should bother me more than it did. Violence is very central to this book, so if you don't like it, this may not be the best pick.


The writing style was hard of get used to and was a little frustrating. Griffin switches between complete sentences and sentence fragments, and that sometimes come off as choppy. It fits the style of story pretty well, but again, it can be frustrating. It was also sometimes hard to tell who was speaking, but I think most of the blame for that lies on me.


Overall, I do recommend this book. I would've been fine if this was a stand-alone, but since that seems to be rare these days, I will probably be reading the sequel; I'm not anxious for it to be published, but I will be looking forward to see where Matlock heads in the future.

After being released from prison after serving a sentence for killing a member from the Minton family,
Dan Matlock is back working for Big Chris as a debt collector, a woman you wouldn't want to cross

This book has all the grit and drama you could want. It gives you a clear descriptive picture of Lincolnshire and has menacing dangerous points to it.

However, It wasn't a book i particularly enjoyed, i felt like it was being told by one of those detective programmes in the '60s where a narrator speaks over the programme. Sadly i gave up halfway through.

Sorry NetGalley, but thank you for the opportunity xx

Dan Matlock has got out of jail , There the murder of the man he killed it wasn’t murder.
Like Matlock found out in prison there is no getting away from your self
.so is time to get home
I had an ARC from Unbound Digital

East of England

By Eamonn Griffin

Published by Unbound Digital


PUBLISHERS BLURB

Dan Matlock is out of jail. He's got a choice. Stay or leave. Go back to where it all went wrong, or simply get out of the county. Disappear. Start again as someone else.

But it's not as simple as that.

There's the matter of the man he killed. It wasn't murder, but even so. You tell that to the family. Especially when that family is the Mintons, who own half that's profitable and two-thirds of what's crooked between the Wolds and the coast. And who could have got to Matlock as easy as you like in prison, but who haven't touched him. Not yet.

And like Matlock found out in prison, there's no getting away from yourself, so what would the point be in not facing up to other people?

It's time to go home.

East of England blends a rural take on the noir thriller with a fascination with the British industrialised countryside that lies east of the Wolds, between the Humber and the Wash. Unlit byways rather than the neon-bright and rain-slicked city. A world of caravan parks, slot machines, and low-rise battery farms.

The flatlands of the east coast; decaying market towns and run-down resorts, and the distant throb of offshore windfarms. Where the smell you're trying to get out of your clothes is the cigarette taint of old phone boxes and bus shelters, and where redemption, like life, is either hard-earned or fought for, one way or another

MY REVIEW

Dan Matlock, released from prison after two years is expecting his father, Joe to pick him up, but he’s not there. So he steals a car and makes his way home....

Dan is not a nice man, he’s back into ‘working’ for Big Chris almost immediately as her debt collector, he’s also choosing other targets for his thieving, to let certain factions, namely the Mintons and Corrigans that he’s back.

So begins a tale of violence and various dodgy dealings, with such descriptive writing you feel you could find your way round the area with no problem. You can almost smell the seedy, seaside, Skeg, and rural Lincolnshire with its menacing darkness that’s just out of eyesight, something you might catch out of the corner of your eye beyond the bright lights and noise of ‘fun’.

Eamonn Griffin has created a realistic, believable character in Dan Matlock, Lincolnshire’s very own ‘Jack Reacher’...you may not like him much, but you will still be on his side, and hoping for the best with the tension building to a bloody, violent end, with some surprises that I didn’t see coming at all. Brilliant read and I can thoroughly recommend it.

I would like to thank the Author/the Publishers/NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a fair and honest review

I found this book addictive and mesmerising. Initially impatient with the staccato text I came to realise that it fits perfectly with the characters it was portraying. Matlock was a likeable character despite his bad boy image and the tension as old scores were settled built to a dramatic finale. One thing that puzzled me, as a Lincolnshire yellowbelly (now more of a southerner) I know the area where the book was set well and I couldn't understand why some towns and villages were clearly identified whereas other names were corrupted.