The Execution

On the surface another tale of adultery and ethics in North London disintegrating into violence and recrimination, this very promising debut proves to be so much more - a riveting tale of menace and mystery, of emotional disengagement and passionate action, moral vacuity and physiological sensitization, and written in a smooth, calm prose into which crashes very occasionally the most startlingly disturbing sentence. Wilcken is 35, a young Englishman living in Paris, and with this book already he makes a strong claim on the book world's attentions as a writer with a real future in the Ian McEwan-to-William Boyd market.