Genre: Thriller
Premise: When an American family vacationing in Australia takes an improvised excursion to a private island to see local wildlife, a devastating accident turns them into public enemy number 1.
About: Ready for some inspiration? Adrian McKinty was a Belfast shipyard welder who started writing books, many of which got published but didn’t sell well. At one point he was so poor, he got kicked out of his house. He was driving for Uber just to make ends meet. During this time, an author who liked his books introduced him to producer Shane Salerno, who convinced him to write “The Chain,” a book I previously reviewed on the site. That book got McKinty a movie deal for 1.5 million. This latest book from McKinty is going to exceed that deal, reportedly nabbing McKinty 2 million from Hulu, who are going to turn it into a limited series. McKinty ain’t driving for dollars anymore!
Writer: Adrian McKinty
Details: 385 pages
There are two tracks you can take as a novelist. Okay, there are a million tracks. But the phrase doesn’t sound as good if I say it like that so bear with me. The first track is to create a series – usually about someone solving crimes or what have you, and just write 20 books with that character. The other is to write thrillers that secretly double as spec scripts. They’re written specifically in the hopes of being turned into a film (or, in today’s parlance, a “limited series”).
That’s what The Island is. It was birthed to be purchased by Hollywood more so than to be enjoyed as a novel. Although, like any good story, it works in both forms. The Island has one heck of a setup. It’s so good, in fact, that it sets a bar the author struggles to live up to. To McKinty’s credit, though, he almost pulls it off.
The Island follows a young former massage therapist, Heather, who falls in love with one of her clients, a doctor named Tom. Tom recently lost his wife and it doesn’t take long for Heather to fill that void. Unfortunately, she comes into Tom’s family under heavy fire. Both his kids, Olivia, 14, and Owen, 12, instantly hate her.
When Tom has a conference in Australia, he thinks he can double the work trip as a “getting to know you” vacation for Heather and the kids. So off they go. It turns out, however, that Australia is pretty boring, and the kids are checked out by day 3. They can’t even find a freaking koala bear to hug.
So one day, while driving outside the city and stopping for lunch, they overhear a couple of scraggly locals talking about all the cool animals on their island. The kids beg their dad to convince these dudes to let them visit the island. But these guys are steadfast that it’s a hard no. This is not a public island. But once a few Benjamins exchange hands, their tune changes.
A ferry allows them to take their car over to the island, along with a Dutch couple who overhead the conversation and wanted in as well. While listening to the islanders chat, Heather notes that these are not the friendliest of folks. Some of the things they talk about would give you hard time in the real world. But they don’t live in the real world. They live off on their island. About ten minutes later, the family is on this cool private island that’s roughly 3 miles long and 2 wide.
Tom begins zooming around the island looking for any animals he can find. But it becomes clear rather quickly that they’ve been had. They can’t find anything over here. Angry at being duped, Tom gets distracted and punches the accelerator to get back to the ferry. When he takes a sharp turn, everything changes. A young woman riding a bike appears out of nowhere and they hit her head on at 50 miles an hour.
She’s instantly dead.
Pandemonium ensues. Tom panics. The kids are confused. It’s up to Heather to figure out what to do. She knows that if the sketchy island people find out about this, they may have their own version of island justice in mind. So Heather makes the call to pull the body off the road, hide it in the brush, and get back to the mainland. From there, they’ll tell the authorities what happened. But by no means can they be on this island when the locals find out what they’ve done.
In one of the most harrowing scenes I’ve read in a long time, the family pulls up to the ferry and tries to calmly convince the captain to take them back immediately. The captain wants to wait for the Dutch couple though. Meanwhile, Heather is staring at this walkie-talkie strapped around the captain’s chest, knowing that if someone finds out what happened, he’ll be alerted immediately.
Since this book is titled, “The Island,” and not “After the Island,” I think you know what happens next. Their secret is discovered and mob justice begins. But this is way worse than regular mob justice. These are the kind of people who tie you down next to red ant hills and watch insects slowly make a meal of your face. Somehow, Heather and the kids escape. But they’ve got nowhere to run to. Only… the island.
Books are the new spec scripts. But because Hollywood loves following trends rather than following logic, they’re currently convinced that any book needs to be turned into a TV show first. Which is what we’re getting with The Island.
And that’s too bad because this is a movie all the way. It’s not a TV show. Let me explain. This is an ACTION-THRILLER. It’s about movement. It’s about escape. It’s about time running out. It’s about the chase. We’re not talking about a psychological thriller in the vein of Big Little Lies where slow talking dramatic scenes are an organic part of the story.
This is a chase-and-escape scenario and those work best as movies. Literally from the moment the hit-and-run happens, there are 175 pages of non-stop intensity. If you try and slow all that down because you have to to fill up an 8 episode television show, it’s going to affect how thrilling the story actually is.
And by the way, those 175 pages were some of the best thriller pages I’ve ever read. McKinty understands one of the primary rules of writing captivating thriller scenarios. Which is to put your characters in situations that the reader thinks, “There’s no way they’re getting out of this.” Weak writers write situations that they can get their characters out of, and by extension, we the reader know they can get out of as well. Therefore, we’re not entertained.
McKinty is the opposite. The family is in the bush. A line of people looking for them is just 500 feet away. They’re getting closer. The family can’t go anywhere without being seen. One of the kids is so dehydrated, he couldn’t move even if they had an escape route. The islanders have made it clear that once they capture them, they’re going to kill them. It’s Coen Brothers level, “How in the world are they going to get out of this?”
And McKinty puts them in that situation again and again and again. It’s riveting.
However, McKinty makes a choice late in the novel that abandons this philosophy. I understand why he did it. But I still think it was the wrong choice.
He basically decides to turn Heather into John McClane. She goes on offensive. This is advice that I’ve actually given writers myself. You want to change up the dynamic of your story so that the reader doesn’t get bored. We’ve been on the defensive the whole time. Let’s go on the offensive.
Also, at some point, you want your hero to start being active rather than reactive. So I’m guessing that’s where McKinty’s mind was at when he came up with this choice.
So he stuck the family in a safe cave where they couldn’t be found. And this allowed Heather to start going on the attack.
My issue with this choice is that I no longer feared for the family. The family was fine. That was the whole reason I was invested in the first place. I knew if the islanders captured the family, they were dead. That’s where the suspense and conflict and fear resided. As soon as the kids could hang out in this nice cave and drink clean water, I relaxed. And if your reader feels like he can relax during a thriller? You’ve made a wrong turn.
Writing is funny like that. Sometimes the thing that you’re supposed to do isn’t always the best thing for your story. You’re supposed to change it up so it isn’t an entire movie of “get chased.” If your hero is reactive for much of the movie, at some point they have to become active.
Yeah, those things sound great in a vacuum. But, in the end, it’s gotta be about what’s best for your story. If your story feels like it’s firing on all cylinders when this family is barely able to escape these crazed islanders, then that’s what the whole story needs to be about.
With all that being said, I thought this was a VERY entertaining book. I’m so curious how they’re going to adapt it. It looks like we’re going to be getting a lot more slow “hang-out” scenes between chases. I’m curious if they’re going to be able to pull that off and not lose any of the tension.
Definitely check out this book if you’re into thrillers. It’s good stuff.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A thriller book with a good hook is the 1997 version of a million dollar spec script. Every streamer is looking for these. Psychological thrillers preferably (Big Little Lies, The Watcher) but The Island proves that they’ll buy action-thrillers as well.
