There is a certain genius evident in the unique style of Magnus Mills. Every novel since The Restraint of Beasts has combined the absurd with the deadpan, where mundane is often elevated to the disconcerting. Much of what Mills implies is left unsaid. The reader is forced to work. At one level, The Forensic Records Society is about bickering blokes obsessing over records in their local pub. At another, it is a critique on our organisational systems for societies that often their downfall can lie in their dogma, irrespective of where you may sit on the political spectrum; or as Mills writes on page 100: ‘Was it really beyond human capacity... to create a society which didn't ultimately disintegrate through internal strife? or collapse under the weight of its own laws? or suffer damaging rivalries with other societies?’ The choice of pub name — The Half Moon — evokes obvious parallels with Orwell. Similar to Animal Farm, this novel is both short and deceptively simple, but much more lies beneath.
By Magnus Mills