Review: Long Reach by Peter Cocks

When his big brother Steve turns up dead on the muddy banks of the Thames, seventeen year old Eddie doesn't buy the theory that he killed himself. Steve was his hero, but only now does he realise there was a lot about his brother he didn't know. So when a friend of the family reveals that Steve was working as an undercover agent before he died, Eddie jumps at the chance to sign himself up for a piece of the action. He's issued with a new name, a new past, and the keys to a safe house where he'll be living from now on. His first assignment? To earn the trust of crime lord Tommy Kelly's beautiful daughter.

Protagonist Eddie is seventeen when Long Reach begins, but the world he finds himself drawn into is a dangerously adult one. If he blows his cover, he's dead. Literally. This is serious stuff, and author Peter Cocks certainly doesn't shy away from the harsh reality of the criminal underworld he's portraying. The language is way more colourful than you'd find in the majority of YA fiction, and the violence is occasionally so brutal I found myself flinching as I read. Nothing about Long Reach feels as though it's been cleaned up for its target audience, and that's exactly what makes it feel so authentic and convincing. It's what makes your heart start hammering like crazy every time Eddie puts himself at risk, because you truly believe that this isn't a world that will go easy on him just because he's a teenager. Far from it.

But while Eddie is doing a man's job, in some ways he's still a boy. And his first assignment sees him given the task of getting close to a girl who just happens to be a total catch - apart from her incredibly scary crime lord dad, that is. Before long, things are hotting up between them... and it's not so easy for Eddie to remember that he's meant to be pretending to date her. Even for the reader, the very real chemistry between Eddie and college girl Sophie soon starts to blur the boundaries between cover story and love story, giving this otherwise gritty thriller an added dimension of depth and emotion.

Tightly-plotted, edgy and smart, Long Reach starts out promising and only gets better from there. While I suspect that it will appeal chiefly to male readers, I'd actually recommend it to both male and females at the top end of the YA age range who enjoy fast-paced, filmic thrillers. I couldn't put it down.

Out: January 3rd 2011, UK


A major thanks to Walker Books for providing a review copy of Long Reach.

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Long Reach is the first novel in Walker Books' Undercover range, which they describe as the best of YA fiction. Walker are so excited about these particular titles that they're devoting a new blog entirely to Undercover - you can check it out here to see what else they've got coming up this year.