Safe Return Doubtful

Contemporary British fiction – published 2024

This is a dark satire of almost every contentious political issue of contemporary Britain; the broken refugee system, the decline of the NHS, the crisis of the Met police, pandemic issues, and the rise in popularity of the extreme right, and that’s not all.

Thereby lies the problem, it’s trying to do too much. It seems impossible Lustgarten can cover all of these topics in one book. He makes a pretty good go at it, but the plot suffers, and key characters lack depth in their descriptions.

The opening of the book is strong, and concerns the death of a Somalian refugee in the Channel after an incident involving two off duty policemen who have taken the law into their own hands. The body is washed up on the southeast coast where it is discovered by a senior NHS nurse who is struggling with grief after the death of her son. She makes it her mission to give the young Somalian a decent burial.

Most chapters progress due to some highly implausible plot shift, and it’s not the type of book where this can be ignored easily.

Lustgarten’s writing is at times clunky, most evident when attempting humour. He also has the habit of providing his opinion in paragraphs that really need not be there.

My GoodReads score 3 / 5