The Edge Online - Reviews. Nicola Griffith

Slow River
Nicola Griffith
Voyager, paperback, 342 pages
Review by Steve Jeffrey (1996)

Lore van de Oerst, youngest daughter of the van de Oerst family, is dumped naked and injured in a city alley after fatally injuring one of her kidnappers. Her family, worth billions from their gene tech monopoly, have shown no intention of paying her ransom. Someone wants her out of the way. She is rescued by Spanner, hacker, con artist, pimp and pusher, and gets drawn into Spanner’s increasingly grandiose plans, walking a dangerous, unstable edge between the lure of easy money and the threat of summary violent retribution. When the partnership degenerates under Spanner’s addiction to a new and dangerous pheromone drug, and Lore’s dark, haunted dreams of her family and her kidnap ordeal, Lore has to try to break free and find life on her own terms.

As Sal Bird, she takes a menial job at a local wastewater treatment plant, while still tied to Spanner for one last deal, a charity broadcast scam that will rake in thousands to a diverted account. But the wastewater job proves almost as perilous as Spanner’s desperate plans, with costs and safety procedures cut back to dangerous levels. Lore’s concerns, and her evident knowledge of the inherent dangers in how the plant is being run, raise the suspicions of her supervisor, Magyar. When the storm finally breaks, it proves all too carefully planned, not an accident, but sabotage, and the trail leads back to a horrible secret buried in Lore’s past.

Slow River is a disturbing book, one that looks deeply into the terrifying effects of betrayal and abuse, of trust, power and responsibility that, combined with greed and wilful ignorance of consequences, leave Lore scarred, mentally and physically, in fear of her family, friends and those around her. It is also, as Griffith feels she has to point out in her Author’s Note, a fiction, but no less powerful or disturbing for that.