in George Veck’s Monotone Masquerade, Justin Billings was in a suffocating household where his autonomy and life is monitored. Through a series of scams involving a fake autism diagnosis, he has become his mother’s meal ticket. To escape her psychological abuse, he enters the North Wales care system. Soon after he is dragged into Darcy Quinney’s drug dealing den, where he is once again not free to leave.

George Veck’s literary novel was a bit of a mixed bag for me, and hard to rate. First, the plot is in a rare case, the strongest point of the novel. It is a tight narrative that has some unique twists and turns and will keep you interested. Veck’s biggest asset would be timing, I’d say. He seems to instinctively know when exactly to throw the emotional hits, when to pull back for a bit of quiet, and when to dash forward through the action-drama.

Secondly, the editing and overall writing style are fine, and effective in the case of the latter. Veck rarely delves into poetic prose, but he can craft a scene quite well (which suites this setting). As mentioned, while there were some questionable typography/editing choices, the general layout and such is very readable without any major issues.

The weakness would be the uneven, at times ungrounded cast. There are certainly points when the dialogue and the drama hit the perfect note. However, often I found it hard to “picture” most of the characters as real people. They at times dipped into an over-the-top, uncanny valley sort of puppetry that was hard to shake – like watching young actors starring in a remake of a classic film.

Even despite the last quibbles, the plot drove things on and made this an interesting read. This is a decent book, and that by my standards that would have to be a 3-star range. In summar, Veck’s Monotone Masquerade may have trouble standing out from the crowd, but I believe most will find it an enjoyable read.

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