Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
As all writers know, Time makes its own rules and quite often doesn’t adhere to them, Time is able to ridicule humanity, make fun of the way it plans and schemes and then sees it comes crashing down, a heartbeat missed, a skip in the fabric of time, and suddenly, as Pink Floyd rightly sang, “Ten years have got behind you.”
To cater for the young adults, those in between a passage of time themselves, who see life through two differing lenses of post childhood and the oncoming storm of responsibility and damage limitation, is not an easy task. The reining in of the author perhaps at its most demanding, the tight structure and narrative designed to appeal but also to be true to how a young adult in this day and age would think, would witness the world and the often sheer terror, the frightening prospects of what is expected of them; it is a feeling conveyed with stylish precision in the first of a three part trilogy, Missing Beat, by Liverpool writer Bob Stone.
Joey Cale is on the verge of great things, or at least the chance to live a life that might have not happened, a significant issue with his heart, a beat out of time, an over protective mother making sure that the hospital’s good work in keeping him alive as a child. Now as he reaches the most dramatic of crossroads yet, collecting his A-Level results, that heart is what saves him as he is plucked out of time and finds himself on the outskirts of Liverpool, seemingly alone and with no clue to what has just taken place.
In many ways Missing Beat has the glory wrapped up within of that of Stephen King’s magnificent opus, The Stand, although not nearly as elongated, the sense of people coming together in the face of most of humanity suddenly disappearing from view, of the archetypical good versus evil battle that rages ever onward and the sides taken, this is the modern day young adult facing down the possibility of danger, of sorrow and loss but also having the responsibility of being the one person who can change the world.
Mr. Stone’s writing is consummate, a steady unwavering pace which keeps Time with Joey Cale’s own heartbeat, the awareness of what the reader will take from the book is paramount but also it is quite simply a damned good read.
A Missing Beat in Time, the stuff of science-fiction, the inner workings of the human soul laid bare, to the teenager to whom the world stands on the edge of two very different worlds, this is the point of looking behind you and realising that listening to your heart is the only way forward.
Bob Stone’s Missing Beat is out now and available from Write Blend in Waterloo and from Beatentrackpublishing.com.
Ian D. Hall