The Sandpit: A sophisticated literary thriller for fans William Boyd and John Le Carré

Book has just arrived so this is a review before I've read it. What smacks you in the-face immediately is that it looks like a book made for people who are partially sighted. The margins are 20mm all round with 40mm at the bottom. The text is set in 13.25/18.5pt. Which means this 400 page book would be more like 200 is it had been typeset as most other books are. More a novella than a novel. I'll amend this review once I've read the book.----8<----Which I have done now.It takes a quarter of the book to get going, then the remaining three quarters about dinner parties, a Post-it Note and where to hide it. Any resemblance to Le Carré passed me by, also I question which part was well written. I got so bored that at times I fast-read pages to move the story on. If you accept the many flaws in the book and story and enjoy watching Transformers or Marvel films, this book is probably aimed at you. If you like tight, well-written prose with climaxes and tension, full of description and well-researched situations, look elsewhere.

Set amidst the dreaming spires of Oxford, The Sandpit captures a corner of the country that in so many ways typifies England. Dyer, a lapsed journalist and now a struggling writer is barely able to meet the fees to keep his son at a private prep school. Being himself, the product of a private education, it’s a matter of pride that standards must be maintained. Naturally, among the parents that Dyer rubs up against, there is snobbery, one-upmanship and bitchiness but when a junior scientist at a local laboratory takes Dyer into his confidence, Dyer finds himself everyone’s best friend, or, a liability that needs to be quashed.From that point on, Dyer must determine what he should do with the explosive knowledge he now reluctantly holds. The scientist, an Iranian by birth, is missing and, given the appalling human rights record of Iran, who knows what fate may have befell him.Not a spy novel, rather a beautifully written book showing human fallibility and greed. Well worth your time.

Ex-journalist John Dyer, who is divorced from his beautiful but unfaithful second wife, leaves Brazil and returns to Oxford, England, bringing with him his eleven-year-old son, Leandro, who he has enrolled at his old private prep school, the Phoenix (which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Dragon School). He rents a small house in Jericho and spends his days researching material for his next book at the Taylorian Library and taking time out to watch Leandro, a talented footballer, play on the school sports field - where Dyer meets several of the parents of the other boys, most of whom are financially very well-off. Short of money himself (Leandro’s fees are funded by a legacy from an aunt), Dyer moves loosely within the group of wealthy and successful parents, but it is with the Iranian nuclear scientist, Rostrum Marvar, that he strikes up a friendship of sorts. When a very alarmed and agitated Marvar confides in Dyer that he has made an exciting, yet potentially dangerous scientific discovery and then disappears without a trace, Dyer is left with Marvar’s formula and also with the knowledge that the unwelcome possession of this information could be putting his own life and, more worryingly, the life of his young son in extreme danger…Beautifully written and absorbing to read, Mr Shakespeare’s ‘The Sandpit’ is one that I enjoyed from beginning to end and although I won’t pretend to fully understand the scientific or political aspects to the story, I was gripped throughout. And anyway, this is not just a novel about scientific discoveries and the political situation between the major powers, it’s also about love, loyalty, integrity, moral dilemmas, power and the misuse of power, so although the presentation of the book and a reference on the cover to John le Care might suggest this is a spy novel, it’s more nuanced than that and I found this an interesting and involving read. I particularly enjoyed the way the author wrote about the close relationship Dyer had with his son and of Dyer’s dilemma about what to do with the potentially explosive information he unwillingly found himself landed with. So, a book I read in practically one long sitting, and would certainly recommend.4 Stars.

Another outstanding novel from Shakespeare. It combines physics, metaphysics and early South American history, all blended together to create an upmarket thriller. The story is narrated by a disenchanted but resourceful ex-journalist, suffering a bad dose of late middle-aged angst brought on by romantic failure and memories of his school days at the Phoenix Prep school in Oxford, now attended by his son (which bears striking resemblances to the non-fictional Dragon school). Though we have excursions to Peru and fly fishing up north, the action is mainly based in Oxford (the parallel universes of which are well-described) and there is an exotic and well-observed cast of characters, many of them fellow Phoenix parents, who are encountered and comically observed on the touchline at football matches and waiting to collect their cosmopolitan offspring at the school gates. All in all a thoroughly enjoyable and engrossing read.

If you like a more subtle thriller then this is for you. It's more along the lines of Alan Furst and Carre than a fast action.he's a great writer with a lovely turn of phrase. Really nails vacuous rich private school parents in the process quite nicely. If I had one criticism - the ending builds to something clever only to fall a bit flat or maybe I just wanted more. Would definately recommend.

An accomplished novelist and the basis for a fascinating plot should make for an excellent read...unfortunately the author uses his emotionally repressed and alas rather dull protaganist as a vehicle for the usual dreary sneers at the subjects of his disaproval, these predictably being America, Israel, Brexiteers and anyone else who might never be found indulging his public school self-loathing at Oxford dinner parties. A great shame, as the background material should have provided for an entertaining and captivating book.