Very much products of the British Colonial era, they were peppered with casual racism and the deluded sense of cultural superiority still clung to by some politicians today. On the positive side, the hero’s exploits allowed young readers to explore exotic corners of the globe, instilling in some a fascination for travel that certainly influenced this reader. Adventure experienced vicariously through reading helped set me off on a lifelong love affair with travel and exploration.
A key moment in the development of this affair came quite suddenly, after I outgrew the works of Captain W.E. Johns. It happened during another library visit, this time with my father, who was a secondary school English teacher. Aware that I was on the lookout for something different, he pointed me at a Travis McGee book by John D. MacDonald that I read in one sitting. Its curious mix of explosive violence and women throwing themselves at McGee might not have constituted typical recommended reading for a barely pubescent teenager – but then neither was my father your typical English teacher.
More than a half-century later, I remain hopelessly addicted to fiction, devouring more than a hundred new books a year; and in my own written work I continue to focus almost exclusively on the crime thriller genre.
Ever since Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841, the crime genre has suffered withering scorn from literary elites who insist on putting it down as lowbrow and formulaic. And yet, nearly two centuries later, crime fiction accounts for around one third of global book sales.
Despite its popularity, the genre does still suffer from a tendency to conform to a pattern. In it, despite, or perhaps because 80% of readers are women, one good man defies the odds by taking on multiple bad fellows. It is a formula I have savoured since my first foray into the world of Travis McGee, but no matter how much I continue to enjoy the worlds of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher or Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch, for this reader, the trope has begun to get old.
Revelatory
All of which makes the discovery of a successful author who bucks that formula with casual abandon a treat worth sharing.
December 2025 booklists filling the end-of-year content void were remarkable for the frequency with which one book was repeatedly praised.
Belinda Bauer’s The Impossible Thing did, in fact, achieve an impossible thing. It created a timeline stretching across a century that somehow made egg collecting riveting. And it did so while re-introducing Patrick Fort, the one-of-a-kind central character from Bauer’s Rubbernecker, published more than a decade before.
My first exposure to Bauer’s work, Rubbernecker was nothing short of revelatory. That is a grand claim, but I challenge you to read the novel and disagree. It tells the unlikely, strikingly original story of an anatomy student profoundly marked with Asperger syndrome. Patrick, while contentedly engaged in the gruesomely depicted dissection of a corpse assigned to him for study purposes, identifies a crime that had gone undetected. It makes for a whodunnit of stunning originality, one that is written in a way that forces literary snobs to appreciate the quality of its construction, the unpredictability of its plotlines and the astonishing reader engagement inspired by the author’s story-telling skills.
Do you know how some best-selling writers contrive to incorporate bafflingly incoherent twists seemingly inserted to excite Netflix producers? In Bauer’s work, the entire narrative is impossible to predict, and all the more satisfying for it.
The Sunday Times said of Rubbernecker: “Contains one of the most startling plots in contemporary crime fiction”.
Val McDermid, the multi-million-selling grand dame of the crime genre, said: “I read this and wished I’d written it.”
Modern book covers often feature at-times suspiciously fulsome lines of praise from big name authors. But when someone of McDermid’s standing says she wishes she’d written it...
Every reader loves the notion of discovering someone new. The moment I finished Rubbernecker, I emailed friend and fellow author Charles Philipp Martin, advising him to make space for it on his bedside table. (Martin’s Hong Kong-set crime thriller Rented Grave inspired awe in this former Hong Kong resident). He responded within days, telling me that Bauer’s multiple award-winning back catalogue had now assumed a prominent place on his to-be-read list. This from an authority on crime fiction not in the least prone to hyperbole.
I am no Val McDermid, but every time this writer sets sail in a new narrative crafted so artfully by Bauer, I can be certain of one thing: I will wish I had written it.
Trust me. You will thank me later.
Ron McMillan is the author of six books available on Amazon. Crime thrillers Bangkok Cowboy and Bangkok Belle have generated sales in the thousands, and his next crime novel, the second in a series set in the 1990s and featuring Rabinder Singh, the only Sikh detective in Scotland who first appeared in Don’t Think Twice, is due out in the Spring.