Headcrusher

Cult Russian psycho-thriller translated. Yay!

By James Rendell

This book is impossibly cinematic and very, very angry. Headcrusher has all the elements that resulted in the celluloid adaptations of Fight Club and American Psycho gaining such iconic status.

Vadim is our main character here, a mid-20s office worker stuck in the mundane rut that is life, his only outlets being a rather odd computer game and writing offensive emails to his superiors that he will never send.

Eventually, Vadim’s boss catches him at these emails, and enrages Vadim so much that he murders him right there and then.

This is where the book becomes swept away with action and intensity, and you can picture every scene as if it was a blockbuster, with every line spewing vivid descriptions, quirky one liners and dark yet funny metaphors.

Although the beginning is a tad slow, and at times the writing is a little overly dense (the descriptions occasionally detracting from the storyline; although props to Andrew Bromfield for what can’t have been an easy translation), this book is very raw and jammed full of massive twists that will keep you gripped to the end.