Richard Doyle - Flood

This well-researched but poorly written novel is a fictional account of what would happen when freak weather causes tidal surges potentially able to breach the Thames barrier and flood London.

The book starts promisingly with dramatic events around Britain, leading up to the tidal surges in London, these events are well described and information given appears to be well researched. However, the book then veers off to become something of a trash Seventies-style disaster movie set in the present day, as Doyle introduces a dizzying cast of hundreds of characters, some of which we never see again, and thus ultimately never know what happens to them. Some of these characters crop up several times in the book, but some are there just for a few paragraphs but we are still told who they are, where they come from and what they do. At this point the book chops and changes and the disasters happen one thing after another getting increasingly ridiculous.

The book moves at a fast pace and this is the only thing that kept me reading, that and the fact that I might eventually find out if London survives. Towards the end I found myself laughing at the ridiculous events that were happening, however I don’t feel that this was what the author intended. Budding novelists could use this as a prime example of how NOT to write a novel as you don’t really care about any of the hundreds of characters. Doyle appears to know London, and his descriptions are accurate. He also seems to enjoy its destruction, and it is a shame that his writing style makes his readers cringe.