A Scent of New-Mown Hay, by John Blackburn

I obtained this book at a library book sale with the cover above, after getting a deliberately vague rec from sovay. It is currently in print, in both paper and ebook form, but very frustratingly, both the cover and blurb of the new edition give away the premise, which in the book you don't learn until about a quarter of the way - and it's much more fun to find out for yourself.

Written in 1958, the novel at first appears to be a post-war spy thriller with a noir tone. Something mysterious but probably bad is going down in Russia; British spies are looking into it; a man is called away from his wife and peaceful life due to his expertise in chemical warfare. But when a British boat is wrecked by a Russian naval vessel and its crew are washed ashore, the book takes a sudden, chilling turn into horror. What sort of horror? We don't know. It has a Charles Fort feel, with inexplicable terrors and mysteries hovering just out of sight.

I can't say more without spoilers, and I am deeply annoyed at how difficult it is to read the book unspoiled as it's very pleasingly cross-genre and odd. The horror elements do come into clear focus, but never quite clear enough to lose their essential fear of the unknown and the unknowable.

I quite enjoyed this weird little book, with its dour and cynical tone, atmosphere of existential dread, and unexpected amount of agency on the part of its female characters, and was pleased to see that Blackburn has written many other books. I'm going to attempt to dive into them knowing nothing.

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