Last Good Man, The / Thomas McMullan

Duncan Peck has travelled alone to Dartmoor in search of his cousin. He has come from the city, where the fires are always burning. 

In his cousin's town, Peck finds a place with tea rooms and barley fields, a church and a schoolhouse. They sit in the shadow of a vast wall, inscribed with strange messages. Out here, the people live an honest life - and if there's any trouble, they have a way to settle it. 

Anyone can write on the wall, anonymously, about their neighbours, about any wrongdoing that might compromise the community. Nothing happens if there's only one allegation. Or two. But any more than that, and there has to be a reckoning.

Don't try running. The moors are a dangerous place, boggy and treacherous; a wrong foot can see you sunk. 

A troubling, uncanny book about fear and atonement, responsibility and justice, and the violence of writing in public spaces, The Last Good Man dares to ask, who speaks, and who do they speak for? What power do sentences have to bind us to our deeds? And what power do names have to anchor the world when extinction is in the air?