This debut crime thriller, by a renowned fiction editor, could not be more timely. Conspiracy theories have always been with us, but the internet has amplified them to the extent that they are more widely discussed – and believed – than ever. The age of mass surveillance, COVID lockdowns, tech oligarchs and the Epstein Files have all contributed to a fertile breeding ground for these ideas. They have also, in times past, been a staple of crime fiction; James Grady’s Six Days Of The Condor and Richard Condon’s The Manchurian Candidate were both adapted as films featuring Hollywood stars. Caller Unknown might just resurrect this dormant sub-genre.
The story begins dramatically with the discovery of seven children unconscious by a road in Maine. Who are they? Dressed almost identically, they carry no personal information. Where have they come from? None of them match the descriptions of any missing children. What has happened to them? The children all have no memories. They are not even sure of their own names, and months of therapy doesn’t result in any breakthroughs.
Reluctantly, the decision is made to foster the children across the country, and Caller Unknown follows the story of one of the young boys, Ed, as he begins his new life.
Whatever Ed’s early life experiences were, they have left him traumatised and unprepared for a normal life. Fostered in Maine with the Constance family, he struggles to connect with either his family or his schoolmates, is largely withdrawn and placid, but when provoked becomes frighteningly violent. But Ed is clever and resourceful, able to recognise his challenges and avoid the triggers which make him aggressive, and makes his way through adolescence.
Ed’s first real connection with another person comes on a family holiday to the Maine countryside. Jim Dove only returned from his tour in Vietnam a few years ago and has taken over his father’s bait and tackle shop. Ed and Jim seem to recognise something of themselves in each other; it’s a very male friendship, bonding over the natural joys of an outdoor life and an understanding that each has been hurt, though both are happy not to speak of it.
It’s a touching portrayal, sensitively drawn, and succeeds as much by what is not shown as what is. It is great writing, and representative of the novel as a whole. Caller Unknown is a long book, and much of it is taken up with setting the stage, creating atmosphere and tension, and the patient building of characters.
It runs counter to the prevailing trend of short breathless chapters and is all the better for it. In this sense, comparisons to early Stephen King and Robert McCammon make sense. Despite its length, Caller Unknown never drifts and I never found myself impatient for the next action sequence.
The first sign that whatever happened to Ed as a child is not over occurs on his first day at university. Enrolled at Northeastern to study political science, he is approached by a stranger who he belatedly recognises as one of the other six children. David was a cruel child then, and age hasn’t mellowed him. With David quoting scripture, Ed can feel his self-control slipping away and his free-will vanishing. The words seem to put him in to a trance, and only the inadvertent intervention of dorm security saves him.
The news that another of the seven, again seemingly not themselves, has committed a terrorist atrocity, brings home the perilous nature of Ed’s situation and gradually the realisation dawns that his whole life is part of a vast conspiracy, decades in the planning. I won’t ruin your enjoyment of the book by getting too deeply into it, except to say the usual suspect of paranoid thrillers – communism, has been replaced by a more western, and equally topical, evil.
Caller Unknown continues through Ed’s life, from college to work, and eventually marriage, takes in the continental United States, before returning to the vast Maine woods for a thrilling climax. There is a revelation in the final lines which I can only believe suggests a sequel. I don’t know how I feel about that. I thought Ed’s story was over, and whilst Caller Unknown is such a good book that I will be first in line for Johnson’s next novel, I do feel slightly cheated.
Also see Hard Road by JB Turner. Or read our interview with Oliver Johnson.
Point Blank
Print/Kindle
£7.99
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
