Last Good Man

WINNER OF THE BETTY TRASK PRIZE'A Scarlet Letter for our times' MARGARET ATWOOD'An extraordinary and disquieting work of imagination, and as original as any novel I’ve read in recent memory' ROB DOYLEDuncan Peck has travelled alone to Dartmoor in search of his cousin. He has come from the city, where the fires are always burning.In his cousin’s village, Peck finds a place with tea rooms and barley fields, a church and a schoolhouse. Out here, the people live an honest life – and if there’s any trouble, they have a way to settle it. They sit in the shadow of a vast wall, inscribed with strange messages. Anyone can write on the wall, anonymously, about their neighbours, about any wrongdoing that might hurt the community. Then comes the reckoning. The stranger from the city causes a stir. He has not been there long before the village wakes up to the most unspeakable accusation; sentences daubed on the wall that will detonate the darkest of secrets. A troubling, uncanny book about fear and atonement, responsibility and justice, and the violence of writing in public spaces, The Last Good Man dares to ask: what hope can we place in words once extinction is in the air?

A Scarlet Letter for our times ... Zamyatin's We meets Lord of the Flies meets de Tocqueville meets cancel culture meets spite and malice meets Jesus. Should words be power? Justice or mercy? What price rage?, Vividly nasty, recalling the smack-in-the-face technique of early Ian McEwan, and so accomplished that it’s easy to forget this is a debut … McMullan has a sureness with violence that puts him in the company of Sarah Moss and Benjamin Myers… Viciously captivating: frightening to be around, impossible to put aside – a bit like other humans, in fact, This is a visceral and disquieting debut novel about the power of words, and should be read by anyone who uses the internet, McMullan makes highly effective use of the rugged landscape, full of unease and portents, in his creepily unsettling debut, a timely tale about the dangers of toxic rhetoric and mob rule, A brilliantly unsettling parable about how we police our societies through violence, language and shame

Thomas McMullan is a writer, critic and journalist whose work has appeared in publications including the Guardian, Observer, Times Literary Supplement, Frieze and BBC News, and has been published in 3:AM Magazine, Lighthouse and Best British Short Stories. He has worked with visual artists, game studios and theatre companies in London, Amsterdam, Beijing and Los Angeles. He lives in London.