The Last Good Man

Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' meets Cormac McCarthy's The Road : a taut mud-spattered debut about violence shame and redemption . WINNER OF THE BETTY TRASK PRIZE . 'A Scarlet Letter for our times' MARGARET ATWOOD . 'An extraordinary and disquieting work of imagination and as original as any novel I've read in recent memory' ROB DOYLE . 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 village Peck finds a place with tea rooms and barley fields a church and a schoolhouse. Out here the people live an honest life - and if there's any trouble they have a way to settle it. They sit in the shadow of a vast wall inscribed with strange messages. Anyone can write on the wall anonymously about their neighbours about any wrongdoing that might hurt the community. Then comes the reckoning. . The stranger from the city causes a stir. He has not been there long before the village wakes up to the most unspeakable accusation; sentences daubed on the wall that will detonate the darkest of secrets. . 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: what hope can we place in words once extinction is in the air?