Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Myths and legends give credence to a world beyond our comprehension, a world of fairy’s and goblins offer a sideways romantic look to a world we have lost, the ugly monsters that live under the bridges, all gone…and yet we find the mythic names resides in our mind and we place association on them when we admonish ourselves as mistakes and cruel acts are undertaken, when we wish to give a syndrome a title.
Kit Derricks’s Lorelei is the epitome of the modern truth that most murders are not solved until a lucky break comes the way of the police, that a person can find a way to kill and fade into the background whilst being the most ‘obvious’ suspect; and the ugliness in the mind, a gremlin, the troll under the bridge, is masked by other emotions that are more than able to explain how those who became close to the murderer died ‘naturally’ or in silence.
Kit Derrick’s Trent is an unlucky fellow, he has lost his girlfriend in an accident, he has fallen into requiring chemical help to bring him peace, and slowly it seems he is falling apart, only a couple of friends keeping his soul together, his ability to take intimate photographs of a local Liverpool band gives him a presence in reality and a small grip of love, one that is steeped in the issue of memory and its own myth of twins being part of the same whole.
Where Trent exists so must the idea of the woman who fell to her death when spurned by her lover, the fabled Lorelei, myth and reality co-existing, and in the end what transpires is a conclusion that becomes an involved Liverpool Noir, the densely mythic appreciation that combines elements of the monster like as the author provides detail of each person’s troll like side as they battle for control over the memory of the band that brought them together.
Kit Derrick is unsparing in his slow disintegration of the possible hero within each character, each agenda is examined, and for the hero of the narrative, the ambiguous realisation of the possible truth of the deaths of a lover, a musician, and a friend, are shrouded in the fine mists of reader’s determination.
It takes a person steeped in the Liverpool ethic, of being part of the world created by the Mersey, to bring something so understanding of its pop culture reference to be accurate and chilling at the same time, and those myths and legends, the lady that falls as she is spurned, are grafted into a wonderfully tight and thrilling tale of the collapse of the human mind when placed under serious pressure.
Lorelei is a cracking addition to Kit Derrick’s intensely driven work, ambition of literature that excels in its delivery and style.
Ian D. Hall