Ordinary Thunderstorms
William Boyd
Bloomsbury, paperback, 403pp.
ISBN 978 1 4088 0247 2
£11.99

Edward Randell

“He took out the relevant documents and printouts from what he found himself calling – though very aware of its thriller-esque pretensions – the ‘Zembla File’.”

This is the sentence that, for me, holds the key to why William Boyd’s latest novel Ordinary Thunderstorms doesn’t quite work. The phrase “though very aware of its thriller-esque pretensions” sounds uncannily like an apology from a writer who, torn between writing a genre thriller and a social commentary on life in 21st-century London, has found himself stuck in a limbo of the thriller-esque.

It is clear from the book’s packaging that Bloomsbury is selling Ordinary Thunderstorms as a high-class page-turner in the mould of Restless, Boyd’s 2006 espionage bestseller. And the novel’s premise has a Hitchcockian flavour: Adam Kindred, an everyman with an everyman name (who also happens to be a climatologist, hence the title) finds himself in the wrong place when Dr Philip Wang, a researcher in the pay of a large pharmaceutical company, is murdered. He flees in panic, and by the time he has calmed down enough to go to the police he has become the only suspect. Valuing freedom above comfort or convenience, he decides to disappear into the faceless metropolis, pursued by the police, a hit-man and Big Pharma. It falls to Jonjo, the hit-man, to articulate the novel’s central idea: “No cheques, no bills, no references, no mobile phone calls – only payphones – no credit cards, only cash – nothing. That’s how you disappear in the twenty-first century – you just refuse to take part in it.”

At first, Kindred tries to live a self-sufficient existence, sleeping rough, before being drawn into a shady underclass of prostitutes and junkies. It is at this point that the novel falters: Boyd becomes so preoccupied with exploring this grimy netherworld that the story throttles back from a thriller-esque run to a steady amble. Not that there is anything wrong with a dose of social realism – but I had trouble swallowing Boyd’s portrayal of life on a sink estate. Perhaps because it is his purpose to show how far Kindred has sunk, the lowlife characters seem almost subhuman, and their street patois and asylum-seeker broken English are not realized with a precise enough ear to be convincing. Intercut with this is a contrasting comic subplot centred on the travails of Ingram Fryzer, the CEO of the pharmaceutical company, which – though entertaining – would benefit from heavy editing.

The second half of the novel picks up pace again as Kindred pieces together the conspiracy that led to Philip Wang’s death. But then an oddly gratuitous death threatens to throw our sympathies off-balance, while another plot strand is suddenly and mysteriously resolved. Instead of a thunderous set-piece finale, we get a light drizzle.

Though never less than readable, Ordinary Thunderstorms is rarely more than ordinary. From William Boyd – a writer of excellent literary novels and excellent thrillers – it can only be a disappointment, possessing neither the observational insight that would lift it to the former category nor the narrative tautness required for the latter.