Safe Return Doubtful

I read a few reviews of this from people who wrote that they couldn’t work out what the hell was going on. Those sort of comments attract me. It was swiftly added to my list.

A middle-aged man on a train bound for London breaks down in tears, having suddenly lost all memory of who he is and where he’s going; no hint of his identity can be found in his pockets, on his clothes. So far so familiar, many books are set around amnesia.

Giving himself the pseudonym of John Buck he checks into a Paddington hotel and wanders the streets, occasionally hearing instructions from an inner voicein his head, which he calls his secret friend, or the other John, and occasionally gets the odd flashback to a terrifying childhood.
Alternating chapters meanwhile, deal with his wife Helen, who is at home, anxiously waiting his return. She believes him to have gone to a publisher, to show his incredibly detailed, obsessively so, sketches of wildflowers.

Indications come to the fore that show all is not well between the couple, John has an aversion to sex, Helen has been working at an escort agency.
When John fails to turn up at home Helen shares her concerns with Angela, an attractive young woman looking for partners, and Martin, an unpleasant character, a lecherous married man.
It isn’t long though before the reader can’t trust the version of either protagonist, and wonders which of them, are the most psychotic.

There’s a double ending providing even more ambiguity, that I can see might not satisfy readers in the 1980s expecting more of the usual in terms of a mystery. It even borders on fantasy at times.

In my view, it’s really bold and experimental writing, my sort of mystery. It has long since lapsed to be out of print, but available digitally on the Internet archive (archive.org). It really does deserve a reissue, as it’s the sort of book that will be better appreciated now than when it was first published (1986).

My GoodReads score 3.5 / 5