ThrillersReviewThe tension of a school siege is mingled with a meditation on the bonds of friendship
Rosamund Lupton’s new novel opens on a “moment of stillness; as if time itself is waiting, can no longer be measured”. This infinitesimal pause is followed by a single gunshot, a bullet moving “faster than sound”, which doubles as the crack of a starter pistol – propelling us into a nail-biting three hours (“180 minutes, 10,800 seconds”) during which the teachers and students at a school in a remote part of Somerset are held hostage by two unidentified gunmen. The book urges us to follow a multitude of stories “playing out … simultaneously, connected by time and place”.
The most compelling narrative thread leads to Rafi, a PTSD-stricken teenager who single-handedly shepherded his eight-year-old brother Basi out of Syria, and is the first to suspect that the loud bang in the woods signals an imminent attack, from which he must now race to save his brother again. Meanwhile his girlfriend Hannah is trapped in the library desperately trying to keep the wounded headmaster alive. Then there’s Beth, a helicopter mum frantic with worry about her son Jamie, somewhere in the school but not responding to her texts or calls; Camille, a teacher sheltering her seven-year-old charges in a dangerously exposed pottery studio (“the glass windows turned into weapons”); the courageous deputy head Neil; and Detective Inspector Rose Polstein, a pregnant forensic psychologist tasked with putting together a picture of the monster capable of planning such a horrific attack.
Three Hours intersperses scenes of breath-sucking tension with stirring meditations on human nature. It’s no coincidence that Rafi smuggled a dog-eared copy of Macbeth out of Syria, or that this “play about raw evil” happens to be what the drama students are rehearsing when the theatre goes into lockdown. But the message Lupton’s novel delivers is that only love can save us. “Love is the most powerful thing there is,” the headmaster tells Hannah, “the only thing that really matters.” Love is commemorated in all its forms: romantic, brotherly, maternal, familial, but most of all the bonds of friendship and community that make it possible for one person to lay down their own life for another. Three Hours is immensely satisfying as an action-driven thriller, but its real resonance lies in exploring the mysteries of human consciousness, revealing how “you don’t know a person … including yourself … until the everyday is stripped away”.
Sara Collins’s The Confessions of Frannie Langton is published by Penguin. Three Hours is published by Viking (RRP £14.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15.
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