SCI-FI BOOK REVIEW: THE BREACH BY M T HILL

The Breach
Author: MT Hill
Publisher: Titan Books
Pages: 384
ISBN:9781789090031
Reviewed By: Sandra Scholes


Zero Bomb was MT Hills first novel for Titan Books, and when you think that the previous one was innovative and interesting enough, along comes The Breach.

The Breach is the story of Freya Medlock a newspaper reporter assigned to cover the death of a climber called Stephen, hoping the story can up her profile and earn her some well-needed cash. What Freya doesn't expect is what she finds; a peculiar photograph which surfaces on an urban exploration forum with a weird note, then there seems to be more to the photo than she thought. She soon thinks that the photo could be the secret to finding Stephens killer and why he had to die.

Freya soon meets Shep, a trainee Steeplejack with a legitimate job, but a secret life. While others have a hobby, Shep likes to go out as an urban explorer, something which I had not heard of before reading this book. In its basic terms, urban exploration is dangerous and involves people going into abandoned buildings to see what they look like and post their findings on forums. Known as the urbex scene, it is also illegal as the urbexer is breaking and entering a property, even if it is abandoned.

Through the book, we see Freya doing the investigating, searching for any clue that can lead her closer to her killer, yet what she also does is find windows into the fascinating lives of urbexers and the risks they are prepared to take.

This isn't just a murder mystery story, I saw it more like a journalist who had a pretty normal life, taking a step into how dangerous other people's lives are and how thrilling they found that danger. As I hadn't heard of urbexing before I did understand how some could get thrills from being in dangerous territory and Freya did too.