Run Time has been on my TBR for a little while and as I was in the mood for a thriller, I finally got round to ticking it off my list. I’ve read several books by Irish thriller-writer, Catherine Ryan Howard including 56 Days and The Nothing Man, and really enjoyed them, so had high-hopes for Run Time, especially due to its move-making setting.
Opening sentence: The road is narrow, the edges of it crumbling, as if losing its battle to hold the treeline back.
One call can change everything
Our lead character is Adele Rafferty. An Irish actress who became famous due to her 14-year role on a popular Irish soap-opera. She left the show thinking roles in big Hollywood films were coming her way, but that transpired to not be the case.
We meet her in LA. She moved there to pursue her career and get away from her tarnished reputation after an unfortunate incident making an Irish film. Things have got so bad that she’s on the verge of quitting acting, then she gets a call offering her the lead part in a low-budget Irish horror-film, Final Draft.
Filming in West Cork, the actress they had dropped out, so Adele, if she wants the role of Kate, has to jump on a plan from LA and throw herself head-first into the project. Given her lack of other options, she does, despite the fact this has all happened very fast and she has more than a few questions brewing.
A story in a story
Run Time has an embedded narrative structure, so we get chapters in Adele’s POV, but also pages from the Final Draft script, so we meet Kate and Joel, the characters in the movie. When the two worlds start overlapping, it quickly becomes clear that all is not as it seems for Adele on the isolated movie-set.
The book navigates around tipping into cliched or predictable territory by having Adele address the obvious plot points. This way, we’re on the journey with her and her reactions and thought process answer the questions that might pop into the reader’s mind.
Was I really expected to take that text seriously, though? I mean, come on. It was straight out of Horror Movie Tropes 101.
I love how there is often a nod to Catherine Ryan Howard’s other books in her novels and here there is a reference to a new TV drama being made, based around the true-crime story featured in The Liar’s Girl.
So, it’s a shame to say that while I enjoyed 90% of Run Time, the ending just fell a bit flat for me. The most obvious revelation turned out to be the one we got and I was gearing myself up for some sort of high-adrenaline payoff at the end that never happened. That said, I had a great time reading it and will definitely read more from Catherine Ryan Howard.
You can’t love absolutely every book an author publishes, and that’s OK.
- Get your copy of Run Time here;
- Published by Corvus 2022;
- 448 pages;
- My rating:
