Book Review: The Jam by Dan Soule

The Jam centers on a group of disparate people, all traveling on an English motorway, who get caught in a traffic jam. There’s the internet guru, the professional soccer player, a couple and their teenage son, and an elderly retired doctor who kindly offers a lift to a working girl he meets at a service station.

Sitting in stopped traffic for hours is a nightmare at the best of times, but when weird things start happening, you will want to scream at the characters in the book “Run, run away while you still can!”

Dan Soule seems to be going from strength to strength. This novella is a strong follow up to his spectacular Savage, released earlier this year. The writing is smooth and fast paced, and the story is full of his trademark complex, flawed characters. However, I was disappointed that there were no dogs in this book, as I particularly love the canine characters in his previous novels.

Comparisons could be drawn to King’s ‘The Mist’, but Soule has taken a similar set up and developed a very different story. I found following English characters in such a setting highly entertaining.

Unfortunately, Soule includes a trope that I am not a fan of, which dampened my enjoyment of the novella, but as the plotting is so tight and the characters are so compelling, it would be unfair to remove more than one star because of my personal dislike of this trope.

Props to the wonderful cover art, which creates a suitably creepy atmosphere for what lies within.

Full of imagination, tense scenes and characters you will get invested in, this is a strong addition to Soule’s catalogue.