A Twisty Tale

Blink.

That’s all it takes, a sliver of time between alive and not-alive. A blood vessel rupture, an out-of-control vehicle, a trip or slip or twist and blink. Trouble is, you don’t know when that blink will occur, today, tomorrow, next year. But in the new novel “Five” by Ilona Bannister, it will happen in the next few minutes.

It’s 7:01 on a random morning on a train platform beneath an average British city. The 7:06 train to London will arrive soon, and eight people wait to board.

What they don’t know is that one of them is about to die.

The word “no” was not in Emma’s vocabulary; in fact, she bulldozed past it, and if that ruined someone’s life, well, so what? Her vengeful desires were why she made a deal with Liam to have a baby he could ignore after the conception, but little Gideon turned out to be more than Emma could handle. Still, she adored the willful, incorrigible, shrieking little brat.

On this day, Liam only needed Emma for one thing: to get his brother to sign papers on an expensive business deal. If she wasn’t willing to smooth things along for him, to sweet-talk his brother, Liam was willing to go to court and take Gideon away from his mother.

He really didn’t want the boy. He wanted the deal.

As a child, Mrs. Worth was forced to dissect dead animals for her obsessive father, which taught her absolutely zero about love. Sonny was told his entire life that he was better than everyone in every way possible, but tens of thousands of pounds in gambling debt indicated otherwise. “To Do List,” as she’s nicknamed, didn’t want to get involved when a fight broke out. “Bad Back” didn’t either, so he tried to slink away with his faux-injury. “Medical Student” wanted to help, but overhead sirens sent him into a childhood-memory-induced panic.

Five people. Three witnesses. Five minutes.

And the train is coming...

If you’re sitting down right now, do this: skootch forward about seven or eight inches, settle in, and get used to it. You’ll be perched right there on the edge of your seat, the entire time you’re reading “Five.”

Told by a snarky narrator with a sarcastic sense of macabre humor, set in a subterranean space that’s very poorly staffed, this is one of those novels that you’ll obsessively clutch all night. Author Ilona Bannister leaves no room for air here; her story is tight, the situations are tense, and the characters are all irredeemably awful people.

Or are they? As you get to know their backstory, as each character becomes a fuller, rounder person and the train nears, the narrator asks a question: " Who do you want to die? It’s a spot-on, bolt-upright, astute query, one that changes how you regard this book. Wow.

This novel is for twisty-tale lovers, and anyone who wants something knife-sharp and rubber-band taut. Pick up “Five,” and you’ll be so immersed that you won’t have time to…

Blink.