Lou Gilmond (lougilmond.com)
Fairlight Books (fairlightbooks.co.uk)
‘”The issue that we have… is not so much the fact that there are lots of digital and listening eyes out there – we agree that can’t be changed. It’s that you are intending to join them all up. Do you not see how dangerous a central system might be if it was able to identify where every citizen was at all times, able to see them, listen to them and track them in real time?”
“Dangerous? Are you for real? It’s the opposite. It keeps everyone safe. You guys don’t know how lucky you are living on an island so you can control who comes in and out. Once you have a fixed base of populace that is identified, it’s plain sailing. We’re helping you to build a stockade with the cameras pointing in, to keep the Brits safe. A palisade, it’s called.”‘
It’s five minutes into the future. A newly elected coalition government seeks unprecedented powers of general surveillance, with the justification that the world is an evermore dangerous place and that radical action is required in order to keep the nation safe. Meanwhile, two possible murders have taken place – of a prominent media proprietor and a longstanding Member of Parliament – only adding to the palpable sense of threat that pervades events. Backbencher Harry Colbey and opposition Chief Whip Esme Kanha confront overwhelming corruption and resistance as they make a stand for the rights of the individual citizen and for a political system that privileges honesty, integrity and the principles of public service.
Palisade is the second novel in Lou Gilmond’s Kanha and Colbey thriller series. It’s set in a world in which politics is febrile, the development of technology is rampant, and our personal freedoms are under unprecedented attack. Gilmond’s Westminster is authentic and recognisable. Although the various politicians are fictional (one hopes!), they are utterly familiar, as they constantly weigh personal ambitions against the public interest. The new government, an ostensibly progressive coalition, has taken office during a time of material challenge, across the UK and globally. The strains this places on the Government and the official Opposition only add to the tension. This is a political system on the brink of collapse.
The current political preoccupation concerns the balancing of individual privacy and safety against the establishment’s need to use the extensive personal data now collected as a matter of routine to maintain vigilance against the many threats that pervade the modern world. Gilmond sets out this dilemma with stark efficiency. While Coleby and Kanha take extreme steps to make a stand on behalf of the individual citizen, they are confounded and compromised at every turn. In a world in which there are watching and listening devices everywhere, including the multitudinous drones that populate the skies, every step the two protagonists take can be anticipated and countered. Gilmond creates a world that is claustrophobic and terrifying!
Ultimately, this is a novel about power and the lengths people will go to secure and maintain it. Whilst the technology depicted, of course, has the potential to do great good, as well as constitute significant threat, Gilmond engages directly with the corruption endemic in the attempts of a small number of the super-rich to manipulate that technology for their own ends. Compared with a real world in which the owners of social media platforms use their extensive influence to shape the outcome of apparently democratic processes, Gilmond’s characterisation of the fictional Henri Lauvaux, the force behind the novel’s corruption and manipulation, feels all too recognisable and real.
Palisade is a well-crafted thriller that doesn’t let up. The dangers are clear and present, reflecting so many of our current anxieties and fears. The next novel in the series, Divinity Games, cannot come soon enough.
Precarious Gothic 