Silent witness

Never judge a book by its cover - wise words, the truth of which is underscored by I Saw A Man.

At first glance, it might look like a common-or-garden airport novel, something to help pass the time while stuck in transit (especially with the addition of that yellow £4 sticker). But look more closely and you realise it would be rash to write it off so cheaply. First, Faber are not in the business of publishing trash, and second, author Owen Sheers is no commercial hack.

In fairness, the blurb is also somewhat uninspiring, promising strangers' lives becoming intertwined, "a devastating event" and "a terrible secret". The book ticks all of those boxes - but it does so in a way that will satisfy readers of a more literary bent as well as those who seeking a tense thriller. It's as if Sheers has set himself the task of working his magic within the confines of the genre, without exploding the conventions in the way that Jon McGregor does in Reservoir 13.

A large part of the beauty of I Saw A Man is that that "devastating event" is foreshadowed in the very first paragraph and yet Sheers keeps us waiting for chapter after chapter before finally revealing what happened. There's a filmic quality to the flashbacks and backstory, and a masterful management of suspense. It's an engrossing slow-burner rather than a showy firework display.

But it's equally also a very different kind of book - a meditation on mourning, on plumbing the depths of grief and finding ways to escape it (and people to help you do so). It is arguably the sensitive depiction of central character Michael Turner's gradual healing process that most obviously betrays Sheers' background as a poet.

It may not be as astounding as his debut novel, Resistance, and the denouement does turn on a rather improbable plot point, but I Saw A Man is nevertheless a significant cut above your average page-turner.