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It begins with murder.
An old man, Josef Engel, is assassinated for crimes he did many years ago in Nazi concentration camps, and his killer wants information on the pale man – the mysterious leader behind it all.
Seventy years after the Second World War, Josef Engel’s murder sets in motion a catastrophic series of events that seem motivated by an abhorrent secret reaching as far back as the War.
Solomon Creed, dazed and amnesiac, finds himself embroiled in the mysterious murder while trying to uncover his own identity. An unexpected twist in fate finds Solomon suspect in the case he’s trying to solve.
At the same time, young Leo begins having premonitions in the dark shadows, an entity trying to enter the world. It has something to do with the death of his grandfather, Josef Engel, but the young lad is too disorientated by the hauntings to figure out the connection. As events unfold it becomes clear that these hallucinations might be far more real than they first seemed . . .
The only way Solomon Creed can clear his name is by saving Leo from a darkness and figuring out why the survivors from a Nazi death camp are being hunted down and killed. With each step forward he remembers a little more from his past, giving him clues on how to protect the future.
Toyne’s novel is a kaleidoscope of perspectives and voices, a bird’s eye view on a surreal and mystic thriller, blending the stylised writing of Stephen King with the gripping pace of the best in crime, such as Lee Child and Paula Hawkins. Its constellation of characters keep the plot moving with the drip-feeding of clues and discoveries.
Although The Boy Who Saw is a continuation of the Solomon Creed series, that started with Solomon Creed, it can be read as a standalone novel.
This book is fast-paced with short chapters that offer cliffhanger after cliffhanger. It’s written in the rapidfire style of action/adventure stories and is accordingly cinematic in its portrayal. It makes great escapism, blurring identity and truth with expertise. At one moment Solomon Creed is a man with apparent extrasensory gifts, the next nothing more than an escaped, super-intelligent paranoid schizophrenic. What’s the truth? What is hallucination and what is reality? Toyne garners both possibilities in this heady, explosive psychological thriller.
Simon Toyne is the bestselling author of the Sanctus trilogy: Sanctus, The Key, and The Tower. He wrote Sanctus after quitting his job as a TV executive to focus on writing. It was the biggest-selling debut thriller of 2011 in the UK and an international bestseller. His books have been translated into 27 languages and published in over 50 countries. The Boy Who Saw is the second book in a new series of epic thrillers that span the world and centre around the enigmatic Solomon Creed. Simon lives with his family in Brighton and the South of France.
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