'The year is 2024, and the residents of the Tower, a virus-proof apartment building, live in a state of permanent lockdown. The building is controlled by James, who keeps the residents safe but incarcerated. Behind bricked-up front doors, their every need is serviced; they are pampered but remain prisoners.
'This suits Eugene just fine. Ravaged by the traumas of his past, the agoraphobic ex-detective has no intention of ever setting foot outside again. But when he finds the Tower’s building manager brutally dismembered, his investigator’s instincts won’t allow him to ignore the vicious crime.
'What Eugene finds beyond the comfort of his apartment’s walls will turn his sheltered existence upside down. To unravel the Tower’s mysteries, he must confront James... and James takes his role as the Warden very, very seriously.'
When I was first approached to see if I wanted to read The Warden I was a bit nervous about agreeing to it. We're over a year into a global pandemic that his killed tens of thousands, and resulted in serious health conditions for many, with no real end in sight (thank you variant strains and shit government reactions), so I wasn't sure that I was going to want to read a book that actively addressed these ideas. However, having read a couple of books by Jon Richter before I was aware that he's a writer that handles issues well, and thought I'd give it a shot. And I was so glad that I did.
Set in the summer of 2024, The Warden follows the day to day life of Eugene, a former police detective who is one of the select few people to have been chosen to live in The Tower, an experimental building operated by an advanced AI that's designed to keep those inside safe from the deadly Covid virus that's making life outside impossible.
The Tower is controlled by James, an AI that's been programmed to keep the inhabitants safe and secure. It delivers their meals, it talks to them, it even supplies the inhabitants with the supplies to pursue their various hobbies and interests. It's their protector and their friend. And if things work well with The Tower more of these structures could be built; a possible solution to the years long lockdown that has been taking place.
Eugene is happy with these arrangements, even before the lockdown he was struggling to go outside his home thanks to a trauma in his past, and getting to lock himself away with everything he needs delivered to him by efficient robotic servants seems like a dream scenario. And at first everything is going well, but when the small lift that delivers his food opens up one morning with a body inside Eugene's stable new existence gets thrown out the window, and he has to fall back onto his old training and his ingenuity to try and get to the bottom of things.
At it's hear The Warden isn't about Covid, or any kind of virus outbreak really. What it is is a locked room mystery. The pandemic is simply the reason for the characters involved being unable to simply leave, to being able to run for help, or to find somewhere safe to hide. This story could have easily taken place in another inescapable location, such as at the bottom of the ocean or in the dark void of space. And because of that, this isn't a book that I found to be too depressing or awful to read because of the current real world events.
The mystery of what's happening inside The Tower, the murder, the apparent vanishing people, and the madman on the loose, isn't the only plot thread that takes up large sections of the book, however, as we get a second narrative that weaves in and out of Eugene's story. In a series of flashbacks we get to see the creation of James, the AI that controls everything.
At first I wasn't sure what these flashbacks were, as we follow a fairly powerful and at times unlikeable businesswoman who works in the company that would go on to create The Tower. But as things unfolded and it became clear that this was an origin of sorts for one of the more important characters in the main story I began to enjoy it more and more. Not only did these sections add more context to the world as we got to see how the pandemic played out and evolved, but also began to understand what James was, and what he was capable of. There were seeds being planted for answers that would be revealed in Eugene's story, as well as its own mystery that began to be just as compelling as the one in 2024.
There were times where I began to hate this shifting narrative, purely because as soon as I spent time with one I'd want to know all the answers because it was so engaging. Then the narrative would jump to the other story and I'd be frustrated that I'd have to wait to see what happened in the other, before becoming engrossed in the second one. This repeated so many times in the book that I found it hard to pick which of the two narratives I liked the most, and the constant wanting to know more kept me reading long after I should have put the book down to take a break. The Warden was responsible for a couple of very late nights, as I kept telling myself 'just one more chapter' over and over again.
Whilst I've only read one other Jon Richter novel, and a collection of his short stories, this is something that I've found in his work every time I read it. Jon is able to craft a mystery in a way that it never feels like you're being strung along or teased, yet you become so absorbed into the narrative and want to keep on reading. Because of this compulsive hold it had over me, the strangeness of the locked room mystery, and the two stories weaving in and out I almost forgot that this was a book that I was nervous about picking up.
If you see the description of this book and think that it might not be the best time to read a story about lockdowns, pandemics, and Covid in particular I can fully understand that; but I would say just give it a go. Just try the first few chapters. Just see if this mystery piques your interest, because I can assure you it's so much more than a story about living in a world with Covid.
The Warden surprised me in a lot of way, it was so much better than I was expecting, and proved to me that stories can be set in a world that reflects our current crisis without if being overwhelming or depressing; that in the hands of a writer as talented as Jon Richter the pandemic and become a background element of a truly engaging and exciting story.
You've convinced me - thanks - it's on my tbr list ....
ReplyDeleteI hope that you enjoy it!
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